As the global capability centres (GCCs) landscape in India undergoes a tectonic shift, it's no longer just about scale and cost efficiencies. Enterprises are increasingly looking at their India centres as drivers of innovation, value creation, and transformation. In an interview with Fortune India, Sanjay Menon, managing director of Publicis Sapient India, breaks down the India opportunity, the evolving role of GCCs, how AI is reshaping operations, and the talent dynamics that are shaping the future. Edited excerpts:

What is the India opportunity for Publicis Sapient right now, and how are enterprises thinking about it?

If you look at the Indian market, there are three parts that we are focused on. First, the Indian private sector, especially financial services, retail, and health, currently leads the most progressive conversations.

The second is the public sector because the government is focused on the transformation of PSUs.

But the third—and the most potent in terms of the need for partnerships—is the GCC space. GCCs are at a pivotal point where they are resetting their ambitions. Historically, these centres were primarily about operating cost efficiencies—essentially lift-and-shift models to reduce costs by 10-20%. But that has evolved.

Over time, companies realised they could use India not just for OPEX but for CAPEX as well—product development started happening here. What’s happening now is even more significant. The maturity of India’s startup ecosystem and consulting sector has created a leadership layer capable of owning and shaping ideas, not just executing them.

Earlier, India was the best execution engine; someone else would design the box, and we would colour it. Now, we can draw the box itself. GCCs are shifting towards value creation and innovation, which we call innovation arbitrage.

What does it take for GCCs to innovate in India?

Innovation requires an integrated perspective. Earlier, setting up in India meant hiring lots of technologists. But to innovate, you need more than that. You need strategy, product thinking, experience design, engineering, and data—what we call the SPEED framework.

Most GCCs have been heavily skewed towards technology but lacked product managers, experience designers, or strategists based in India. If that doesn’t change, they risk becoming just faster caterpillars. Transformation is about becoming the butterfly, not just speeding up the caterpillar.

If you are setting something up today, it should reflect the North Star of what the organisation wants to be in two to four years. GCCs are becoming increasingly strategic to their parent companies because they offer that opportunity.

What is the scale of this opportunity?

The GCC market in India is about $60 billion annually. Even if you assume that one-third of it is services, that's roughly $20-25 billion today, growing at about 30% a year. That means it could be a $50-billion services market by the end of the decade.

In comparison, the Indian private sector consulting market is about $18 billion. We expect the GCC-driven services market to surpass this by the end of the decade.

What are the priorities when you work with Indian private sector enterprises?

A big focus is modernising legacy systems. Look at most banks; they're still running on mainframes. If your systems are the weakest link in the chain, you can't be nimble.

Previously, modernising was prohibitively expensive. But today, programmes that used to take seven years are being done in two. That changes the business case dramatically.

Then there's customer segmentation and analytics—using Gen AI and other technologies to drive hyper-personalisation.

A key difference we see is that Indian enterprises are increasingly global in their ambitions. Look at Dr. Reddy's, Sun Pharma—they are global companies in every sense.

When it comes to AI-driven disruption, is the GCC model moving entirely from scale and cost to innovation and transformation?

It’s not either-or. It’s a plus-plus. Existing GCCs that have large back-office operations, say, 5,000 people, might continue running that. But simultaneously, they are setting up new Centres of Excellence (CoEs) focused on payments, AI, or digital products that are far more innovation-driven.

At the same time, legacy operations will also get disrupted, but maybe in different directions—through automation, AI, or agentic AI models.

How do you see agentic AI impacting the GCC landscape?

Anything that is a codified process will see disruption. Pure automation has already made some inroads. With agentic AI, the human layer making operational decisions will get compressed. Humans will move up the value chain to more strategic decisions. How deeply this impacts depends on the complexity of the task. Simple tasks like ticket issuance may become fully automated, but something like fare optimisation, which has nuances, might still need human validation.

There’s always this fear: Will AI-driven GCCs reduce employment significantly?

There’s a very famous quote that applies: "With any new disruptive technology, we overestimate it in the first five years and underestimate it in the next ten."

Every major technological wave—take the period from 1980 to 2025—the world economy grew at 3.6-3.8% annually. It should have technically reduced jobs, yet global employment has more than doubled. What happens is that some muscles become obsolete (like remembering phone numbers post-smartphone), but new muscles develop.

Gen AI lowers the barrier to interacting with technology. People who previously couldn’t write code can now interact with systems using natural language. More people can create more value. If you zoom out, India continues to be the most robust talent pool in the world. The shift is from execution talent to leadership talent—people who can drive product, strategy, design, engineering, and data.

This is why GCCs are expanding mandates beyond technology. They’re asking, “Why aren't we doing product management from India?” or “Why not have more leadership here?” The perception has shifted completely in the past five years.

What are the biggest gaps or white spaces that GCCs still need to solve for?

It varies. Some companies need to upgrade their tech stack because they’ve been running on legacy systems. Others need help building a globally relevant employer brand in India. Some lack leadership talent.

But the North Star is the same for everyone—a culturally integrated, strategically focused, full-capability setup in India with innovation as a mandate, not as a side project.

What does this pace of technological change mean for how businesses operate? Are they able to keep up? Where does profitability fit into this transformation?

They have no choice but to keep up. Earlier, transformation happened in big loops over the years. Now, you’re seeing businesses operate in a larger number of smaller loops. Look at Amazon—it went from concept to launching two-day delivery in 111 days. Today, that feels slow because Blinkit does 10-minute delivery.

Shorter loops require an integrated perspective—strategy, product, engineering, experience, and data—working together in real-time.

And profitability is the holy grail. Every improvement—whether reducing waste, automating, or improving productivity—lowers the cost of creating outcomes.

It’s no longer about whether two expensive people cost more than ten inexpensive ones. It’s about which setup creates the outcome faster and more effectively.

Can India become the source of global innovation? Or will it remain an execution hub?

The gravity is shifting toward India. GCCs alone won’t solve it, but they are a huge enabler, alongside the startup ecosystem, the IT sector, and the consulting industry. If you look at where the world is headed, the direction of travel is clear.

Unless we do something spectacularly wrong, it’s a matter of when—not if—India becomes a global innovation hub.