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In this episode of EY India Insights podcast, we explore how Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in India) are evolving from cost efficient delivery units into strategic capability and innovation partners. Priyanka Gupta, Partner, People Consulting, EY India, shares insights on the maturity journey of GCCs and the critical shifts reshaping their role within global enterprises. The discussion also highlights why talent depth, differentiated employee value propositions, product ownership, and closer integration with enterprise strategy are important for success of next-gen GCCs.
Key takeaways
GCCs are evolving from cost centers to strategic capability hubs, driven by talent, innovation and enterprise relevance.
Many GCCs straddle operational excellence and strategic ambition, with capabilities expanding faster than their influence in enterprise decision‑making.
Next‑generation GCCs are shifting from process delivery to end‑to‑end product ownership, requiring new talent profiles and operating models.
A differentiated employee value proposition (EVP) at GCC must reflect lived experience, leadership access, and purpose, and just become a hiring message.
Future GCC success is likely to depend on deep enterprise integration, domain expertise, and deliberate talent investment to deliver sustained business impact.
One of the key differentiators for next-gen GCCs will be deep integration with enterprise strategy and decision making, not technology or talent alone, nor cost efficient offshore delivery.
Priyanka Gupta
Partner, People Consulting, EY India
For your convenience, a full text transcript of this podcast is available on the link below:
Pallavi
Hello and welcome to EY India Insights, where we explore the ideas shaping the future of business.
In today’s episode, we’re joined by Priyanka Gupta, Partner, Partner, People Consulting, EY India. In this episode, Priyanka would be sharing insights on how Global Capability Centers can rethink talent and innovation strategies to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving business environment.
She also discusses what this shift means for leadership, workforce models and long‑term value creation.
Priyanka Gupta
Thank you, Pallavi. Thank you for the opportunity and it's my pleasure being here. I think it's a very prevalent topic and should be a very interesting discussion.
Pallavi
Thank you. So Priyanka, to begin with, GCCs are rapidly shifting from cost centers to strategic capability hubs. So what are the key drivers behind this transformation, and how are GCCs redefining their role within the global enterprise?
Priyanka Gupta
That's a great question by Pallavi. And I think the shift is real. Unfortunately, the data that we have confirms it from the last study that we had done. But what I find most interesting is that it isn't just a uniform transition. It's a majority journey that a center goes through. And many centers, even today, are struggling to identify at once being operationally strong, but still strategically under embedded. In most cases, cost efficiency hasn't disappeared. Honestly, it remains foundational, especially when you're looking at industrial manufacturing energy GCC. But it's no longer the sustainable justification. It's maybe just a starting point or a starting point for a business case. The justification to sustain and grow now is about talent depth and innovation velocity. What we're seeing in most of our mature JC clients is a genuine shift from the process of saying we run processes to we own product lifecycle.
We run an activity to we run the end to end process. And that's a fundamentally different operating model. It's about different hiring, different careers and a completely different employee value proposition. What they are becoming is about an enterprise reinvention engine. Working closely with the business a process delivery GCC hires people for functional expertise and the output versus or center focused on product ownership hires product managers a business mindset, AI architects, domain specialists.
And it's almost where you're having a PL conversation with the global business unit head. That's a completely different talent profile. And another nuance that our data shows us is many GCS are expanding in capability faster than they are being integrated into enterprise strategy. So the capability exists. At least that's what we'd like to think. But the influence isn't following as fast as we'd like it to follow. Which brings me naturally to talent, because you cannot close that influence gap without having the right people, and also providing them the most compelling reason to stay and grow with the form.
Pallavi
Thank you Priyanka. Now, with talent becoming a critical differentiator, organizations are rethinking both hiring and employee value proposition. What does a future-ready talent strategy and differentiated EVP look like for next-gen GCCs?
Priyanka Gupta
The most common mistake I see policy is in GCC’s. EVP is treated like a hiring pitch. It's about getting talent in and then, you know, they'll just grow with the global form and the global proposition. Unfortunately, it's not just a pitch. The real test of a good proposition is really about the lived experience of what the employee validates to the journey, and that's where predominantly we see where the gap is and the right people notice that gap is and that's when they start to exit. And it creates a sense of disengagement or disconnect.
Our survey revealed that, you know, it sounds obvious and but people are not acting mostly upon it is what attracts someone to the center potentially is something that is completely different or needs to see a shift with what retains them as the center matures.
So earlier, a GCC’s hiring mandate was largely about what you how quickly can you get a 500, 1000 member stand up finance, tech, procurement, engineering, so on and so forth, right? But today it's really different. It's about finding one exceptional AI architect or that product manager. We spoke about who has had end to end experience, end to end visibility, who is a let's say, a cybersecurity specialist with domain depth understanding of the industry.
So the funnel is really inverted from a talent and a proposition perspective. It's harder to hire, but the impact per hire is far greater than what it used to be. The other shift that we're seeing is, you know, from connecting propositions to hiring, is that earlier it was fairly linear. As you joined in, you know, you go deeper and higher into the function and you just keep getting promoted.
But that proposition has shifted to what we call borderless pathways, right? It's really about finding that movement across geographies, collaboration with enterprise leadership, the ability to work across domains. And now, you know, with everything that's happening in the world of tech, using tech, you know, dominantly, you know, ways of delivery, right. So that's really about it in involve career architecture, looking at rewards differently, looking at performance differently.
And also bringing back purpose at the center of each of our roles. The purpose of why that role exists in the center, the purpose of what is the impact that we create towards the business. And this is where we're saying that an employee value proposition is not a branding exercise. It's about connecting who you are as an organization to the type of people you need, and the type of people you'd like to grow.
Where we have that leadership access, we have the decision. Right? And all of that is not just a perk. It is the core proposition of what the center has to offer. So it's moving from here's why you should join us to here's why you should stay and do what matters in what you believe.
Pallavi
Thank you, Priyanka. As GCCs take on product ownership and enterprise-wide transformation mandates, how can they balance operational excellence with innovation, while fostering a startup-like, entrepreneurial culture?
Priyanka Gupta
Very, very interesting. You know, and I think the word balance is actually a bit of a trap that we get into, because the centers that we've seen and worked with very closely and seen grow, you know, very, very rapidly and, you know, transform are those that have actually not balance operational excellence and innovation. It's really about how it's really architected to coexist.
It's really about intentional design of the operating model of the org structure, about the platforms, about the culture. Right. And how you really thrive in that coexistence. So, you know, there are a couple of things that are done by the teams or the centers today to make this really great, where we're talking about structural separation with strategic connection.
So for instance, innovation labs or COEs. Right. It's not about having them and keeping them in a protected space. It's really connecting them to the core business so that what they're working on is just not a prototype. But it's transformational. The access is not to a limited group, but it's a structural design where the domain and the business is connected back to what is the theme that's driving transformation and innovation, which is embedded across each of the functions?
Right. When we talk about a startup, you know, we talk about this phrase, which is called a founding member effect. And honestly, any new center naturally has a bit of this startup type effect, right, where you're looking to set up something from scratch, help an organization grow with it. So GCC sort of entity. But when you're looking at mature centers, it's really looking at building new ventures, new avenues of growth, new efficiencies, new ways of doing business and how are you looking to create and business impact.
So new product lines, new capabilities where people continue to have that sense of ownership, which may not have been there, you know, or sorry, which would have been there when you started off, but slowly stages to, you know, trickle down as you grow into the center. So you keep that alive.
Also, culture is signaled to the operating model and not just through branding posters across the office. So we are saying we are an entrepreneurial organization and an entrepreneurial GCC. but every step requires multiple approvals. The risk taking culture is poor. It's very, very controlled. In that sense. Then you are not creating a culture of entrepreneurship. It is just something that you are stating, right?
So it's really the fact that how can you run stringency in your governance and controls, but yet provide that freedom and architectural freedom for people to be able to run and thrive and creating new things across the center? A GCC that wins across all of these areas are the ones that are really shaping what their enterprise strategy is and what their growth strategy is.
So it's really about, you know, moving from we are good at everything to finding something that is, you know, core to what the business does and how the center today is really creating that business value and value re-engineering. And something else that we're seeing very honestly, is what we call value recycling, where you're giving business and functions on site, time back and investments back so that together you can focus on innovation, growth, customer and people experience.
Pallavi
Thank you, Priyanka. Now lastly, looking ahead, GCCs will need deeper integration with global strategy and industry-specific approaches. What will distinguish the most successful GCCs over the next 3–5 years, and how should leaders align talent, innovation, and enterprise priorities to get there?
Priyanka Gupta
So as we've seen, you know, centers evolve. There was a first wave of GCC success per se, let's say in India, which was really about proving that this model works.
Then there came a phase where it was about proving that we can scale it and we can sustain it, right? And now there's a third wave that some have entered into, some are entering into. And the new centers want to start here very honestly and get to all of this together is to see how can we earn strategic relevance at the enterprise level. So it's beyond a proven model and a scaled model, but it's really something that you're proving from business impact and getting to that level is where we are seeing GCC’s compete as well as succeed in how they're able to run.
The single biggest differentiator over the next two to, you know, 3 to 5 years will not just be technology or talent, which is what most of us think today, but it's really how we are designed close to sitting with the business, how closely with embedded sit with enterprise and the strategic decision making capabilities of what the business needs to offer, rather than in offshore arm which is providing effective, reliable delivery at a cost competitive model.
So it has to be really moved around that, and that is what needs to change, right? Where we are able to look and make decisions with the business units rather than get too brief for delivery. Right. And that's been a shift that a lot of the centers have been seeing. The second one is really about how deep we can go from a domain perspective, which brings me back to my original point of end to end ownership.
End to end, you know, value chain in terms of what the center is able to drive rather than a piece of the puzzle from an activity perspective. Because even when we are looking at organizations moving to a Agentic enterprises, etc., it's beyond an activity and a use case and a part of one's process. But it's really about the end to end value chain.
And it is this genuine, you know, process, industry depth and muscle that could get the GCC to succeed. And the third lever in my mind would be talent. It's where it's not happening by chance. So the differentiator of all of this and what brings it to life is going to be having the right people and not just the right headcount.
Right. So when we've been hearing all these phrases to say skills as a currency, etc., it's really talent as a currency. And in terms of being instead of under investing in them, really looking at over investing in them so that we are ready for that global transformation in the way we are wanting to drive it.
And you know, just to sum it up Pallavi, I think the GCC story in India is already one of remarkable capability transformations. But the next chapter is not going to be written by doing the same thing faster. Right. It's really about doing it with those conscious choices about what are we building, what are the people that we have and have it on the right to lead along with the global enterprise?
So at this stage of the journey, where centers are in, you know, the 3 to 5 years we're talking about. It's something that where it's the relevance of the GCC, which is really owned by them deliberately rather than happening by chance.
Pallavi
That brings us to the end of this episode of EY India Insights.
Thank you, Priyanka, for sharing your perspectives on how Global Capability Centers can rethink talent and innovation strategies, and for outlining key priorities for organization and leaders.
Priyanka Gupta
Thank you, Pallavi, Thank you so much for your time today. It was a pleasure speaking with you
Pallavi
Same here, and to all our listeners, thanks for tuning in to follow the EY India Insights podcast on your preferred podcast platform. For more expert conversations. Until next time, this is Pallavi signing off.
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