The GCC Delusion: Why "Moving Up the Value Chain" Has Mostly Been a Myth

For over a decade, India's Global Capability Centre (GCC) ecosystem has been one of the country's biggest business success stories. With over 1,800 GCCs employing hundreds of thousands of professionals, every new technology wave—from cloud computing and digital transformation to analytics and AI—has come with the same promise: GCCs will move up the value chain.

Yet many continue to be centred on operational execution, process management, support functions, and scalable delivery.

The recent decision by Opendoor to shut down its India operations and relocate work closer to customer markets has reignited an important debate. The company pointed to AI-driven efficiencies, evolving operating requirements, and customer proximity—not talent quality—as key reasons for the move.

The real issue extends far beyond one company. It raises a fundamental question: Is the traditional GCC model approaching an inflection point?

The Real Threat Is Task Elimination

For years, globalization was driven by geography—moving work from high-cost locations to lower-cost ones. AI changes that equation. The question is no longer where work gets done, but whether it needs to be done by humans at all.

AI rewards organizations that eliminate, automate, or redesign work rather than simply relocating it. Many of the functions that fuelled GCC growth—transaction processing, reporting, operational support, manual testing, standardized customer operations, and routine analytical work—are also the most vulnerable to automation.

The risk isn't that GCCs disappear. It's that enterprises require significantly fewer people to deliver the same outcomes.

Escaping the Headcount Trap

For decades, GCC success was measured by employee numbers, scale of operations, migrated functions, and cost savings. Those metrics made sense in a labour-intensive world. They are becoming less meaningful in AI-native enterprises.

As AI dramatically improves productivity, organizations will judge GCCs by business impact, innovation, and strategic contribution—not workforce size. The future GCC will not necessarily employ more people; it will be expected to create more enterprise value.

Beyond Reskilling

While much of the current conversation focuses on reskilling employees, that alone will not transform GCCs into strategic assets. The deeper challenge is structural.

Many GCCs were designed around scale, governance, and process excellence. Those capabilities remain valuable but are no longer sufficient. The next generation must be built around product thinking, innovation ownership, AI-first operating models, cross-functional decision-making, and accountability for business outcomes.

A Defining Moment for India's GCC Ecosystem

India will remain one of the world's strongest talent hubs. What is changing is the nature of work that creates value.

The GCCs that thrive will combine domain expertise, AI capability, product ownership, and strategic influence. Those dependent on labour-intensive delivery models may struggle as enterprises pursue automation and outcome-based operating models.

For years, the defining question was, How many jobs can this GCC create? In the AI era, the more important question is, How much business value can it own?

The organizations that answer that question first will become indispensable strategic assets. The rest may discover that scale alone is no longer a sustainable competitive advantage.

For more insights on AI transformation, digital strategy, and next-generation enterprise technology models, visit www.neovayglobal.com/insights