GERMAN DRUG MAJOR Merck is one of the oldest pharmaceutical companies in the world, founded in 1668. Though Merck started operations in India in 1967, the country was not a big focus market until recent years. That is changing now. India has become one of its main global support hubs for nearly all of its business activities, particularly in drug development.

Other than its manufacturing units and sales offices in India, Merck has set up three global capability centres (GCCs) in Bengaluru, employing 2,500 people. The Merck IT Centre (MITC), started in 2018, focusses on building and scaling digital platforms, data capabilities, and enterprise IT solutions that enable in-house global efficiency and innovation.

Anuprita Bhattacharya, MITC’s head, says they were among the first to develop myGPT, an in-house AI-powered research tool, within 45 days of OpenAI’s November 2022 launch of ChatGPT.

Suneela Thatte, vice president and head of Merck KGaA’s healthcare R&D for India, says the R&D excellence centre, headquartered in Bengaluru and with offices in Mumbai and Hyderabad, supports Merck’s global drug research and development programmes. “Our R&D India hub focusses on leveraging the talent footprint and technological advances in India to accelerate innovation and bring more medicines.”

Harsha Arora, head, shared business services, Merck Life Science, says the third GCC, Global Enterprise Solutions, started in 2023, focusses on procurement, employee services, accounting & finance, financial planning, enterprise services, IT, innovation & data, and strategy & transformation.

The other Merck — U.S. pharmaceutical major Merck & Co., a separate entity known outside the U.S. and Canada as Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) — opened its first technology centre in Hyderabad. This became MSD’s fifth such centre globally.

Novartis, the Swiss drugmaker, is not lagging. It started a back office in India in 2001 with a 20-member team. Today, Hyderabad houses its largest pharma GCC worldwide. The Novartis Corporate Center (NoCC) employs 8,500+ professionals across data science, drug development, clinical trials, and regulatory operations, including 2,800 in Mumbai and Hyderabad.

Ganpat Anchaliya, head, NoCC, India, says, “Nearly every small molecule that reaches late-stage development in Novartis has some contribution from our teams in India, whether it is through technical development work, global clinical trial support, advanced analytics or regulatory documentation.”

The centre houses support functions such as end-to-end health, safety & environment (HSE), engineering services, and corporate affairs. Hyderabad also handles a large share of Novartis’ enterprise architecture, data platforms, and IT infrastructure globally.

Other global majors, including GSK, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Roche, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Takeda Pharma, have built large GCCs in India. These centres are no longer limited to IT or finance; they are embedding AI, digital twins and immersive technologies across the entire drug discovery-to-commercialisation pipeline. Eli Lilly, Amgen, Sanofi, and Novo Nordisk are broadening their new GCCs.

A recent report by EY and the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) notes that the Top 50 life sciences companies in the world operate in India, and 23 of them have GCCs here, with more than half having entered in the past five years. As of 2025, India hosts nearly 100 healthcare and life sciences GCCs, and more than 15% of all GCC employees in the country work in this sector. Healthcare and R&D functions account for 43% of the total workforce, underscoring India’s growing role in high-value scientific and regulatory work. Indian GCCs today manage an estimated 45% of global drug discovery and development, 60% of regulatory affairs, and 54% of pharmacovigilance operations for multinational life sciences firms.

The EY-OPPI study says half the professionals in these centres are involved in drug discovery, clinical trial management, safety monitoring, and regulatory submissions. The five largest pharma GCCs operating in India together employ over 19,000, with AstraZeneca at 4,300+, Bristol Myers Squibb at 3,000+, GSK at 2,700+, Novartis at 8,500+, and Pfizer at 1,000+.

OPPI president Bhushan Akshikar says, “The next generation of GCCs is embedding cutting-edge digital and R&D capabilities, transforming India into a global knowledge and innovation engine for life sciences.” Akshikar is also the vice president & MD of GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals.

The world’s largest pharmaceutical and biotech companies are now investing heavily in India, and analysts reckon their cumulative investments in GCCs have crossed $7 billion. In 2010, India had 20 such GCCs. Today, it has over 100; by 2030, it could have 160. The headcount is expected to grow from about 280,000 in 2024 to nearly 420,000 by 2030, according to Inductus GCC, a strategic industry consultancy.

Take AstraZeneca: it set up its first GCC in India in 2014 and today employs more than 4,300 professionals across Bengaluru and Chennai. In November 2024, AstraZeneca inaugurated a Global Innovation and Technology Centre in Chennai, which is now its largest GCC worldwide. The expansion is expected to create 4,000 jobs across Bengaluru and Chennai, says Gaurav Sharma, head, GBS service enablement & Bengaluru hub director at AstraZeneca India. “We have onboarded 70% of our target workforce and are on track to complete this expansion by the end of 2026,” he adds.

More than half of AstraZeneca’s global IT workforce is based in Chennai, supporting functions ranging from regulatory operations to post-marketing data management.

Siva Padmanabhan, MD & head of AstraZeneca’s Global Innovation & Technology Centre, says these centres support over 50 markets and are key to the company’s ‘Bold Ambition 2030’ global growth plan. “These GCCs are strategic epicentres for the organisation globally and are critical multifunctional hubs that support our core business processes.”

The U.K.-based GSK operates GCCs and regional hubs across India, Poland, Malaysia, Costa Rica and Pakistan, with India being the largest. Launched in 2021 in Bengaluru and aided by smaller teams in Mumbai and Hyderabad, GSK’s India GCC employs 2,700 professionals. “Our GCC is a multi-functional hub delivering high-value R&D capabilities, including clinical data management, regulatory writing and submissions, biostatistics, clinical operations, safety science and pharmacovigilance,” a GSK spokesperson says.

Another global leader, Pfizer, launched its analytics gateway in India in September 2024 — a commercial analytics GCC designed to leverage advanced analytics to improve patient outcomes across more than 100 markets. “We deliver in-depth commercial analytics—marketing and sales — across international markets at scale and speed,” says Sutapa Das, director, data science and lead, analytics gateway, Pfizer India. “What began in Mumbai with a small team has doubled through 2025, with Chennai and Delhi added as locations.”

The U.S. biopharmaceutical major Bristol Myers Squibb opened its Hyderabad office in February 2024. It has invested $100 million to establish this GCC, its largest, employing 1,500-2,000 specialists in global drug development and digital functions. In addition, the Biocon Bristol Myers Squibb R&D centre in Bengaluru, established in 2008 through a tie-up with Syngene International, employs 1,000 professionals across clinical development, regulatory affairs, and safety.

Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. established its first innovation centre in Asia in Bengaluru in January last year, focussing on R&D and digital health solutions.

The expansion wave is far from over. Eli Lilly, which has operated a GCC in Bengaluru for over a decade, is setting up a second centre in Hyderabad. The Lilly Capability Centre India (LCCI), which has AI, automation, cloud computing and software product engineering capabilities, is expected to create around 1,500 jobs.

Novo Nordisk is also scaling up rapidly. Its Bengaluru GCC — being developed into a global digital and operational hub — is expanding headcount by 16% to around 5,000 employees.

French drug major Sanofi is investing $437 million to expand its Hyderabad global capacity centre, making it the largest of Sanofi’s four global hubs. The facility employs about 1,000 people and is expected to have a headcount of 2,600 after two years.

Biotech and life sciences players are not far behind. While California-headquartered Amgen launched a $200 million technology and innovation centre in Hyderabad focussed on AI and data science in February 2025, U.S.-based genomics specialist Illumina opened its Illumina Solutions Centre in Bengaluru in 2023.

Modern healthcare GCCs in India, mostly located in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Pune, now manage integrated functions across the value chain. They handle core functions such as drug discovery, clinical trial operations, pharmacovigilance, regulatory affairs, real-world evidence (RWE) analytics, and supply chain analytics, as well as enabling functions — all the while driving outcomes with AI tools.

Healthcare GCCs in India help cut costs by 20% and achieve 40% savings in IT support, R&D, and administrative functions. But that is not a factor now. “The key strength of these GCCs lies in how they leverage India’s vast knowledge pool, bringing global expertise into the country to serve global operations,” says the EY-OPPI report.

Partnerships with local academia and institutions, such as AstraZeneca’s with Sastra University and Novo Nordisk’s with the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore and Manipal Academy of Higher Education, are driving this transformation.

Anchored by world-class generics capability, contract research, development, and manufacturing capabilities in drugs and vaccines, and with GCCs of big pharma acting as innovation hubs, India is poised to redefine global healthcare innovation.