GCCs in India now drive core innovation, leaving behind the 'back office' tag

India’s global capability centres (GCCs) are no longer the back offices that multinationals sought exclusively as a cost-saving option. Today, they are running cutting-edge projects in artificial intelligence, data management and supply chain forecasting, driving profits, and influencing decisions at company headquarters.

During a panel discussion at YourStory’s DevSparks 2025 in Chennai, moderated by Sankara Srinivasan Aiyyathurai, Founder of B2B sales startup Koot, GCC leaders decoded how their tech centres are evolving.

Dinesh Kumar Murugesan, who runs the GCC for DSM-Firmenich, a Swiss healthcare and nutrition multinational, said GCCs have different roles—from being support service providers to strategic enablers, contributing to the core business of the parent company.

Citing an example, he said that his India team built a machine learning tool that forecasts global vitamin demand. “Our forecast accuracy improved to 99% and inventory costs fell 20% because of a project born in the GCC,” he said. The model drew on internal sales data, social media sentiment, and geopolitical factors to solve an inventory crisis that had cost the company millions of dollars.

Building for the core

The shift towards impact-led, capability-driven GCCs is intentional. Balaji Narasimhan, who heads operations for the TransUnion GCC India, said its Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune centres have become “an enterprise engine for execution and delivery—India’s network of innovation centres helps power enterprise’s transformation and modernisation.” With nearly 4,100 associates, the sites cover product development, technology, and operations.

TransUnion has a Data Risk Committee (DRC) that works with functional leaders and developer teams to ensure safe innovation with Generative AI tools. “We allow our teams to responsibly access and experiment with these tools,” Narasimhan said. Early use cases include automating code migration from legacy systems and speeding up dispute resolution for consumers.

Anand Mohanram, Managing Director of Mr. Cooper Group India, described a similar journey at the US mortgage company's 10-year-old hubs across Chennai and Bengaluru. From the time they were set up in 2015, the India centres have been focused on leveraging technology to enable business operations and successfully transitioned from a cost-efficient centre to a value creation and innovation hub.

The team continues to invest in building AI platforms for various business functions, drastically reducing time by processing documents and working on business use cases in areas like call centres, with human supervisors embedded in the process to ensure accuracy and compliance. 

“AI is only as good as the underlying data,” Mohanram noted, adding, “If the data is bad, the output will be bad, and so, underlying data quality is extremely important for building a robust AI model.”

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Expanding scope

For KBR—the US technology, engineering, consultancy, procurement solutions, project management, and digital solutions firm—its 2,500-strong India team is embedded in energy security and energy transition programmes. 

“We support global clients on their energy security and energy transition programs and provide cutting-edge solutions to help solve some of their most complex challenges,” said Geetha Ramamoorthi, Managing Director of KBR India. 

She said, “KBR Digital Accelerators are our suite of cutting-edge, disruptive digital solutions and technologies. Our experts deploy these innovative solutions to cut the distance between data and decision-making and to transform our clients’ businesses.

As an example, we have built the ‘‘INSITE’ platform, which is a digital solution that offers remote technical and advisory services for operating plants and other facilities. KBR INSITE securely gathers data and analyses it to provide value-adding insights into the process performance of our clients’ facilities.

One of the new GCC entrants is Workday, an enterprise software company focused on advancing its AI platform across HR and finance. Its GCC in Chennai is led by Indira Vidyaprakash, Vice President - Software Engineering, and will serve as a vital hub for product and technology development, supporting global operations and driving innovation in next-generation AI.

By weaving AI into tightly regulated sectors such as finance, healthcare, and defence, India’s GCCs are no longer executing for headquarters; they are tackling critical problems—from mortgage compliance to global supply chains—and delivering fixes that move the bottom line.

As Murugesan put it, “GCCs are moving on from being support service providers to strategic enablers.” For multinationals, that changes the calculation. India is not just a cheap talent pool anymore; it is where core innovation is increasingly being done."