How Hexaware Technologies is making GCCs AI ready

Indian technology services company Hexaware Technologies sees an opportunity for itself in the global capability centre (GCC) segment by enabling enterprises to become artificial intelligence (AI) ready.

India is already home to over 1,900 GCCs employing close to two million professionals and this number is projected to grow in the coming years. Along with this, GCCs in the country are also rapidly transforming themselves as technology centres of excellence.

This has also created an ecosystem where large companies are setting up their GCCs in India on their own while others that are relatively smaller in size or want to start their operation on a small scale do it through partnership with Indian technology services companies and other specialised entities.

Founded in 1992, Hexware is one of the few companies to be delisted from the Indian stock markets in 2020 due to change in ownership. It re-listed in 2025 and reported generating $1.5 billion in revenue at the end of CY 2025 with a net profit of $157 million. As of December 2025, the company had 33,844 employees.

In an interaction with EnterpriseStory, Aditya Jayaraman, Country Head - India, Hexaware Technologies said by 2030, most of the workflows in enterprises will be run by autonomous AI agents.

“This requires a fundamental transformation and this is what we are trying to enable for the GCCs,” Jayaraman said.

Though, it would also require the enterprises to bring about certain internal changes like making their data AI ready and creating a technology platform that will enable the existing applications to integrate with AI agents.

According to Jayaraman, the strong point of Hexaware in its engagement with GCCs is the ability to help these enterprises engage with these AI technologies and more importantly define a definite outcome.

In addition, Hexaware also ensures that the GCCs it sets up in India has a similar culture to that of the parent company.

“We are building innovation centers doing transformation work across many areas of technology and business services, but it is all wrapped around the essence of having a strong culture that is very focused on the mothership and infusing that into the GCC in India,” Patricia Connolly, CEO, SMC Squared, a GCC specialist and part of Hexaware said.

She further emphasised that Hexaware tries to understand clients’ cultural traits and ensure that this is imbibed when they are setting up the GCC. “This is our basic playbook that we apply to every single company that we work with,” she remarked.

Hexaware engages with GCCs that are at different levels of maturity. It might be an enterprise which is looking at setting up their first GCC in India or the other who has already scaled their operations and is looking to bring about that technology shift.

It offers multiple modes of engagement with the GCCs. These include build own transfer (BOT), build own transform & transfer (BOTT), managed services, joint ventures etc.

Hexaware believes the strong point of its GCC offering is the ability to align technical expertise with the cultural elements. The company claimed that it has a strong retention rate of 95% in its GCC business.

“We haven't had any fallouts, back outs or premature exits and 100% of the employees have transferred into the entity,” said Connolly.

Hexaware has already been investing in Tier II locations in India. Jayaraman said even GCCs are interested in a multi-location strategy as a strategy of mitigating risk along with the ability to tap into a varied talent pool.

Connolly said, “GCCs need both advisory and execution support. Where we really shine is by building these very trusted relationships helping them actually map a runway in order to achieve their goals.”

The future GCC roadmap of Hexaware is to enable these units to become innovation hubs from India instead of being a cost centre or a location that does some remote work. It also believes in encouraging more number of companies across the globe to set up their GCC operations in India. Most importantly, deliver on certain tangible outcomes.

“Our metric is not how many GCCs we set up each month. We are in the business of helping customers setting up a natural geographic extension of their corporation which is 100% culturally aligned with the parent. That is our focus,” Jayaraman said.