Headcount to capability: How AI is changing the workforce strategy of India’s GCCsBy Shivaprasad Mundakana, CHRO, AscentHR Technologies

For years, India’s global capability centres (GCCs) had a simple selling point. They could find skilled people, operate at lower costs and get large volumes of work done without compromising on scale. That formula helped India become a critical part of global business operations. But the economics are changing. AI can now handle tasks that once consumed hours of an employee’s day. Hiring more people to do the same work no longer makes sense in every case. The question for GCCs is no longer just how many people they can employ. It is what those people can do once machines take over part of the workload.

Beyond Scale

India had 2,117 GCCs across 3,728 units in FY26, employing around 2.36 million professionals. The sector has grown 32 per cent since FY2021, and an estimated 506 companies from the Forbes Global 2000 operate here. Its market revenue has reached $98.4 billion. These figures make a strong case for India’s place in the global economy. But size can also become a misleading measure of success. A GCC cannot assume that a larger workforce automatically creates greater value. If teams spend much of their time on repetitive work that AI can handle, the real question is why that capacity is not being used for harder problems. Scale got India here. It will not, on its own, take the sector much further.

A Different Mandate

Nearly half of the GCCs established since FY2021 were built with AI as a core focus. More than 1,200 centres now have AI and machine learning capabilities, backed by over 250 dedicated Centres of Excellence and a talent pool of 250,000 AI professionals. The numbers show that India has moved beyond simply supplying technology talent. Yet building AI teams is only part of the job. The real test begins when businesses have to decide where the technology belongs. A model may perform well in a demonstration and still struggle with incomplete records, outdated software or a customer request nobody anticipated. GCCs do not need AI for the sake of having it. They need people who understand the business well enough to know where it can help, where it cannot and when a human decision is still necessary.

Jobs In Transition

The debate around AI and jobs often gets reduced to one question. How many roles will disappear? That misses much of what is happening inside organisations. AI can draft reports, process documents, write code and answer routine queries. Someone still needs to check its work, deal with exceptions and take responsibility when the output is wrong. Many jobs will change well before they disappear. A finance professional may spend less time assembling reports and more time challenging the assumptions behind the numbers. An engineer may write less routine code but spend more time testing systems, spotting vulnerabilities and improving performance. These are not automatic outcomes. They depend on how employers redesign the work. GCCs that introduce AI without preparing their people will simply create a new gap between what the technology can do and what the organisation knows how to use.

The Skills Gap

Reskilling has become a convenient answer to almost every question about AI and employment. In practice, training courses alone rarely change how people work. Employees need time to practise, opportunities to use their new skills and managers willing to give them work that puts those skills to the test. There is also a harder problem that GCCs cannot afford to ignore. Junior employees have traditionally learnt through routine assignments, repeated tasks and close supervision. What happens when AI starts doing much of that work? An organisation cannot remove the first steps of a career and expect its future specialists to emerge fully trained. GCCs will have to rethink how beginners gain experience, make mistakes safely and learn to solve real business problems. Workforce planning must account for that gap now, rather than wait until experienced talent becomes harder to find.

A Leadership Test

India has the talent and operating scale to take on a bigger role in global business. But global companies will have to change how they use their Indian teams. A GCC cannot be expected to shape business strategy if it is still treated mainly as a place to execute decisions made elsewhere. Greater responsibility must come with the authority to question assumptions, influence priorities and own outcomes. Leaders also need clear rules around AI generated work, particularly when mistakes could affect customers, finances or sensitive information. Accountability cannot be handed over to a machine. The same applies to workforce investment. Employees are not merely costs waiting to be reduced through automation. Their judgement, experience and willingness to question an answer are part of what makes AI useful in the first place. The strongest GCCs will not necessarily be the ones with the smallest teams. They will be the ones that know how to get more out of the people they have.