In the past decade, as startups have boomed, it has been common to hear experts say: “It’s a matter of time before India produces a Google or Facebook.” That hasn’t happened yet, though we too believe it will, sooner than later.
Today, as global capability centres (GCCs, the offshore tech & business entities of MNCs) in India surge, we are beginning to hear similar excited words.“Maybe the next Satya Nadella is going to be sitting somewhere in Bengaluru,” says Lalit Ahuja, founder & CEO of ANSR, a consultancy that has helped over 100 GCCs establish bases in India.
TOI, and Times Techies in particular, have been tracking the meteoric rise of GCCs for years now. In 2018, we carried a two-pager in TOI on how core operations of MNCs are being moved into their GCCs in India, why India’s vast tech talent has become so globally coveted, and how the faces of cities like Bengaluru are being changed by the entry of GCCs. Late last year, we wrote, based on consultancy Zinnov’s estimates, that more than 5,000 global leaders of MNCs are sitting out of India GCCs. These are not just tech leaders, but also operations’ leaders, including, significantly, the chief customer officer of US data protection and management company Commvault (by that yardstick, the possibility of a Nadella sitting out of India isn’t far-fetched). Zinnov estimates this number will rise to 30,000 by 2030. In February, we wrote, based on consultancy Wizmatic’s estimates, that the GCC revenue figure of $46 billion that Nasscom put out for 2022-23 could be a gross underestimate, that it could actually be more than $100 billion. That’s more than 3% of India’s GDP.
Today, the India GCC phenomenon has caught international imagination. The Economist magazine has just written articles on it, pointing out also that American firms have 1.5 million staff in India, more than in any other foreign country. They note the substantial contribution of GCCs to India’s GDP, and more particularly the country’s services exports. They point out that GCCs could do to India what FDI into China’s manufacturing did for that country. And the value brought in could be even more significant, considering what’s moving into India is the knowledge base of the world.
Ankur Mittal, SVP of technology & MD for India at Lowe’s, the $86-billion US retailer specialising in home improvement and which has a 5,000-strong GCC in India, says US companies have realised that talent availability in India is “far superior to most other locations.” There are, he says, pockets of talent in the US, in countries in Europe, but nowhere is the abundance of talent like in India.
Ahuja says it’s easy to build a large-scale team in India that can be trusted to drive business outcomes with certainty and predictability. “A company like Best Buy that is just coming into India can hire from Walmart, Target, Lowe’s, Amazon, and even Microsoft and Google. They can hire teams within weeks that can build enterprise-grade capabilities and help in digital transformation. A Cigna comes to India and can do 10,000 people in three years,” he says.
He says given that MNCs today are attempting major transformations, it’s also far easier for them to do it out of a new remote location. In home locations, he says, there could be employee resistance to change. Young employees in India, he says, also work a lot harder, and are a lot more committed than employees in home locations.
Another huge India advantage is the possibility of housing diverse talent under one roof, which almost every MNC today is consciously putting in place. Mittal notes the presence of technology, design, product management, data science, AI and even business talent like marketing and merchandising in Lowe’s Bengaluru facility. “When business is closer to engineers, bringing out a product becomes a lot faster,” he says.
Over 120 global functions across business and engineering are carried out from Goldman Sachs’s India GCCs that have 8,500 employees. Over the last two decades, functions performed from India have evolved from end-of-day support for trading platforms and exchange connectivity, to algo trading platform support, data analytics, and client reporting. “Today, our India GCC is a CoE (centre of excellence) with thought leadership for several equities engineering functions,” says Gunjan Samtani, global COO of engineering at Goldman Sachs.
A major project that the India centre led is Atlas, a low-latency trading platform that hosts a suite of trading strategies to help clients achieve their trading objectives, perform historical analyses, build quantitative models with real-time market information and trade execution. This platform helped trim microseconds in execution of trades for Goldman Sachs’ clients. “This latency reduction helped us engage existing and newer hedge funds and quant clients,” Samtani says.
JPMorgan Chase, the world’s largest bank, has some 55,000 people in its India GCCs. Deepak Mangla, CEO of corporate centres for India & Philippines at the bank, says the India GCC is a microcosm of practically all lines of businesses and functions, not just technology. “We manage operations for the bank, we engage extensively in risk management, we perform significant work for finance and HR controls,” he says.
Among several path-breaking work done at Lowe’s India is what’s called LORMN (Lowe’s One Roof Media Network). It was conceptualised in India and is among the fastest growing retail ad networks in the US. It allows vendors to put ads on Lowe’s website and other sites. “It’s very challenging work because everything has to be automated, all the bidding has to happen in milliseconds, and then we have to provide vendors with analytics around it. It’s a very high margin business, so it is driving margin and contributing to the topline,” says Mittal.
And that’s precisely why more and more global leaders of MNCs are sitting out of India.
Today, as global capability centres (GCCs, the offshore tech & business entities of MNCs) in India surge, we are beginning to hear similar excited words.“Maybe the next Satya Nadella is going to be sitting somewhere in Bengaluru,” says Lalit Ahuja, founder & CEO of ANSR, a consultancy that has helped over 100 GCCs establish bases in India.
TOI, and Times Techies in particular, have been tracking the meteoric rise of GCCs for years now. In 2018, we carried a two-pager in TOI on how core operations of MNCs are being moved into their GCCs in India, why India’s vast tech talent has become so globally coveted, and how the faces of cities like Bengaluru are being changed by the entry of GCCs. Late last year, we wrote, based on consultancy Zinnov’s estimates, that more than 5,000 global leaders of MNCs are sitting out of India GCCs. These are not just tech leaders, but also operations’ leaders, including, significantly, the chief customer officer of US data protection and management company Commvault (by that yardstick, the possibility of a Nadella sitting out of India isn’t far-fetched). Zinnov estimates this number will rise to 30,000 by 2030. In February, we wrote, based on consultancy Wizmatic’s estimates, that the GCC revenue figure of $46 billion that Nasscom put out for 2022-23 could be a gross underestimate, that it could actually be more than $100 billion. That’s more than 3% of India’s GDP.
Today, the India GCC phenomenon has caught international imagination. The Economist magazine has just written articles on it, pointing out also that American firms have 1.5 million staff in India, more than in any other foreign country. They note the substantial contribution of GCCs to India’s GDP, and more particularly the country’s services exports. They point out that GCCs could do to India what FDI into China’s manufacturing did for that country. And the value brought in could be even more significant, considering what’s moving into India is the knowledge base of the world.
Ankur Mittal, SVP of technology & MD for India at Lowe’s, the $86-billion US retailer specialising in home improvement and which has a 5,000-strong GCC in India, says US companies have realised that talent availability in India is “far superior to most other locations.” There are, he says, pockets of talent in the US, in countries in Europe, but nowhere is the abundance of talent like in India.
Ahuja says it’s easy to build a large-scale team in India that can be trusted to drive business outcomes with certainty and predictability. “A company like Best Buy that is just coming into India can hire from Walmart, Target, Lowe’s, Amazon, and even Microsoft and Google. They can hire teams within weeks that can build enterprise-grade capabilities and help in digital transformation. A Cigna comes to India and can do 10,000 people in three years,” he says.
He says given that MNCs today are attempting major transformations, it’s also far easier for them to do it out of a new remote location. In home locations, he says, there could be employee resistance to change. Young employees in India, he says, also work a lot harder, and are a lot more committed than employees in home locations.
Another huge India advantage is the possibility of housing diverse talent under one roof, which almost every MNC today is consciously putting in place. Mittal notes the presence of technology, design, product management, data science, AI and even business talent like marketing and merchandising in Lowe’s Bengaluru facility. “When business is closer to engineers, bringing out a product becomes a lot faster,” he says.
Over 120 global functions across business and engineering are carried out from Goldman Sachs’s India GCCs that have 8,500 employees. Over the last two decades, functions performed from India have evolved from end-of-day support for trading platforms and exchange connectivity, to algo trading platform support, data analytics, and client reporting. “Today, our India GCC is a CoE (centre of excellence) with thought leadership for several equities engineering functions,” says Gunjan Samtani, global COO of engineering at Goldman Sachs.
A major project that the India centre led is Atlas, a low-latency trading platform that hosts a suite of trading strategies to help clients achieve their trading objectives, perform historical analyses, build quantitative models with real-time market information and trade execution. This platform helped trim microseconds in execution of trades for Goldman Sachs’ clients. “This latency reduction helped us engage existing and newer hedge funds and quant clients,” Samtani says.
JPMorgan Chase, the world’s largest bank, has some 55,000 people in its India GCCs. Deepak Mangla, CEO of corporate centres for India & Philippines at the bank, says the India GCC is a microcosm of practically all lines of businesses and functions, not just technology. “We manage operations for the bank, we engage extensively in risk management, we perform significant work for finance and HR controls,” he says.
Among several path-breaking work done at Lowe’s India is what’s called LORMN (Lowe’s One Roof Media Network). It was conceptualised in India and is among the fastest growing retail ad networks in the US. It allows vendors to put ads on Lowe’s website and other sites. “It’s very challenging work because everything has to be automated, all the bidding has to happen in milliseconds, and then we have to provide vendors with analytics around it. It’s a very high margin business, so it is driving margin and contributing to the topline,” says Mittal.
And that’s precisely why more and more global leaders of MNCs are sitting out of India.
