Abhishek Rungta: India’s GCCs Are at Their Most Critical Inflection Point in 25 Years. Here Is What Must Change

India’s Global Capability Centre (GCC) ecosystem stands at a pivotal inflection point, driven by scale and a pressing need to shift purpose. The latest NASSCOM‑Zinnov figures put the number of GCCs in India at 2,117 as of FY26, employing 2.36 million professionals and generating $98.4 billion in annual revenue. More than one‑third of Fortune Global 500 companies now operate GCCs in India, and over 1,200 centres have embedded AI and machine learning capabilities — but leaders warn that mere scale no longer guarantees strategic relevance.

“The decisions made over the next 18 to 24 months will determine which GCCs become genuine global enterprise nerve centres and which are reduced to execution arms, consolidated, or restructured when global boards reassess value,” said Abhishek Rungta, Founder & CEO of INT. (Indus Net Technologies Ltd.).

Rungta — speaking from three decades of enterprise delivery experience across 45 countries — argues that the historical mandate for efficiency and cost arbitrage is ending. He points to recent surveys showing intent to evolve: an EY GCC Pulse Survey 2025 found 92% of GCC leaders say their centres now contribute far beyond cost arbitrage and 87% aim to manage end‑to‑end processes for their global parents. At the same time, more than 58% of GCCs are actively investing in Agentic AI, according to the same EY data.

• Legacy operating models: Rungta warns many GCCs were built for “efficiency, execution and cost leverage,” with technology stacks reflective of tools available five years ago and leadership structures optimised for reporting rather than owning outcomes.
• AI as architecture, not layer: “You cannot build an AI‑native enterprise capability centre on a foundation designed for cost arbitrage. The physics do not work,” Rungta said, emphasising that grafting AI onto broken processes only accelerates poor outcomes.
• Talent and leadership gaps: KPMG data showing over 70% of GCC leaders identify talent as the top risk is, in Rungta’s view, a misdiagnosis. The shortage is not of AI tool users but of people who can “think in systems, translate between business context and technical architecture, and own an outcome rather than execute a specification.”

Rungta lays out three specific shifts GCCs must undertake to remain central to enterprise strategy. First, performance measurement must move from utilisation and ticket metrics to business outcomes such as revenue impact, product velocity and decision quality. Second, relationships with service partners need to evolve from transactional vendor management to co‑creation with shared accountability. Third, AI strategy must be owned by leaders fluent in both technology and business trade‑offs, rather than split between siloed tech teams and business budget owners.

He also highlights structural imperatives: replacing inherited workflows that were never designed for autonomy and speed, longer talent development cycles with broader functional rotations, and greater senior‑level accountability for outcomes. The NASSCOM‑Zinnov report asserts that 75% of India’s GCCs have the potential to evolve into portfolio or transformation hubs over the next five years — but Rungta cautions that potential alone will not convert into strategic value without urgent operational reengineering.

Outlook: GCCs that treat AI as the operating architecture and rewire measurement, talent development and partner models stand to become the “global enterprise nerve centres” Rungta envisions. Those that persist with cost‑arbitrage mindsets risk consolidation or marginalisation as boards reassess where meaningful value is created.