IN THE RACE FOR a competitive edge, talent outruns capital or infrastructure as the defining factor for success in any services-based industry. While the Covid-19 pandemic tested the ability as well as the agility of global organisations to get work done remotely, technology helped them to emerge victorious. This may have a direct correlation to the phenomenon seen in India over the past five years: global companies have hit the accelerator in setting up global capability centres (GCCs) in the country. Wooed by the vibrant local talent base, nearly a third of the global Fortune 500 companies have set up GCCs in India.

In a rapidly evolving technology landscape where constant learning is imperative, the learnability quotient is very high in India, notes Vijai Kishan, India site lead and head of India Enterprise Technology at Fidelity Investments. The company has a workforce of nearly 7,000 in India. “If you look at India, one of the interesting things I have been watching is, any learning platform you put out, the Indian associates tend to pick up the skills very fast,” he says. Kishan was at the Fortune India Boardroom titled, ‘GCCs — India’s new service sector powerhouses’, held in Bengaluru last month.

As GCCs are moving up the value chain and more global roles are being created in India, the need of the hour is not just the availability of freshers, but also experienced talent. India’s more than two-decade-long experience in housing multinational companies comes in handy by helping GCCs access experienced talent. This is a key aspect because, unlike the headquarters where roles and divisions are more siloed, GCCs involve end-to-end functioning, explains Lalitha Indrakanti, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover Technology and Business Services India. “At GCCs, we have such a large crowd located in one building who are working across functions, sitting together. The ability to connect tech to the users or to the people who are going to use it for the customers is far stronger here in India,” she says.

With artificial intelligence now becoming more pervasive in all aspects of business, the AI talent is a big reason why GCCs are looking at their India centres for innovation. “We lead the AI here. On AI, the cost to capability (talent), the ability to do AI models, scale them into production, and deploy them across the globe is done at a fraction of the cost from India,” says Debasis Panda, senior vice president and head of TransUnion’s GCCs across India, Costa Rica, and South Africa.

However, GCC leaders also see a large demand-supply gap when it comes to talent with domain expertise and those who can be readily deployed. Currently, most GCCs are trying to bridge this through extensive learning and development programmes, collaboration with the government on skill development, and tie-ups with academia.