The rise of India's global capability centres and expected trends in 2024

Authored by Rohit Jetly, Head of Shared Services and India Site Head, Fidelity International

2023 was an important year for India's Global Capability Centres (GCCs), characterised by trends that highlight India’s crucial position in the global business arena. 

The surge in GCCs, which are projected to reach 2,000 in India over the next 3-4 years, reflects how organisations are harnessing India's talent pool more in terms of depth of skill and the volume of innovation that can unfold from here, with substantial focus on areas like AI, analytics, digital, blockchain and cloud. This reaffirms the confidence global corporations place in India as a hub for advanced capabilities and underscores the nation's position as a global leader in technology. The shift is further accentuated by the talent’s (especially engineers’ and technologists’), clear preference for working in GCCs and product firms, over traditional IT services firms.

In 2024, the outlook for GCCs seems promising and I expect them to play a pivotal role in shaping the future, albeit we take steps to consolidate our position in the rapidly changing world. 

Our leadership talent needs to be in tune with evolving and unmet customer needs and be ingenious enough to create solutions to meet their needs. They should be able to reimagine how they move through the value chain and improve the value arbitrage we provide. They also need to start thinking more creatively about improving our productivity as a collective. To deliver on our promise, our talent needs to excel, both from a skills perspective as well as from a cultural integration perspective and be more hands-on and connected to the business and customer outcomes they are serving.

At Fidelity International, India continues to be a place of strategic importance for over two decades now, having built strong customer-centric capability in the country, delivering work across engineering & technology, finance, digital, general counsel, data and analytics, cyber security etc., to name a few. 

More than 40 per cent of our global talent is based in India and we have recently announced our operations in Bangalore, which will bolster our strategic presence in the country. We have thoughtfully crafted our approach to build a sustainable business, and to leverage India as a talent hotspot as well as a resilience location for our clients globally.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are personal and may not reflect the views of DSIJ.