Global Capability Centers: Key Hotspots and India’s Rise as the GCC Capital

In the quest for remaining relevant in a world that is swiftly driven by digital transformation and innovation, global enterprises are facing massive shortage of tech talent in their home countries in West or Advanced Asia. Erstwhile remedy of talent mobility through immigration appears difficult today given the political ramifications and complex visa norms. However, with enhanced digitalization and data protection happening within some of the emerging countries, multinational enterprises are appearing comfortable to move their key operations (through captive centers) to mature GCC destinations such as Mexico, Costa Rica, Poland, Hungary, India, or Philippines. On the other side, the world’s leading emerging nations have been investing heavily in creating capabilities to attract captive centers of global multinational firms. In this paper, we will have a look at some of the most popular and advanced GCC ecosystems in the world and understand the benefits that they offer to global enterprises through availability of skilled talent pool, advanced start-up environment, low cost of setting-up business operations, and stable political framework. Today, GCCs have moved up the value chain, delivering a wide array of strategic functions to include research and development (R&D), product development, process innovation, digital transformation, data analytics, and also end-to-end supply chain management. These aspects help multinationals to drive growth even from offshore captive locations, unlike in the past where only the HQ offices were seen as delivering strategic growth drivers.

Amongst all GCC countries we compared, India emerges as a strong ecosystem that cannot be ignored given its vast tech talent pool, third largest tech & start-up ecosystem, innovation & R&D capabilities, and lowest cost. Interestingly, India has a deep history of offshoring industry for technology or business process management. In the last 25 years, with every passing black swan event globally – vis-à-vis the Dot.com bust, global financial crisis, and Covid-19 pandemic – India’s GCC ecosystem has been increasingly relied upon by world’s finest enterprises. Cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai are viewed as sophisticated destinations for setting-up global capability centers of multinationals. Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) has become the first service provider to launch a GCC Advisory platform that strives to assist global occupiers establish their captive-offshore shared services, R&D or CoE capability within APAC and South Asia. The choice of location is crucial for GCCs in determining the right business ecosystem and talent availability, as these are increasingly looked upon as the engine of future growth by the HQ. The C&W GCC advisory platform would be a need-based, fit-for-purpose solution, which would foster an Assisted D-I-Y model, delivered by ecosystem of partners in fields of real estate, taxation, legal/regulatory, human resource, and technology.

2

3

GLOBAL CAPABILITY CENTERS:

Key Hotspots and India’s Rise as the GCC Capital