72% GCC leaders identify talent management as a key priority: Nasscom-KPMG report

As of FY23, India has over 1,580 GCCs, with an addition of multiple GCCs every quarter.

Over 72 percent of Global Capability Centers (GCC) leaders identified talent management as a key priority for GCCs, according to a report by Nasscom and KPMG in India.

The ‘GCCs in India: Building resilience for sustainable growth’ report said that as GCCs in India are transforming and moving up the value chain, job roles are expanding and evolving. There is a growing demand for high-value digital skills in areas such as automation architecture, cloud development, AI/Machine Learning, Data Science, etc.

Given the competitive talent market, availability, attraction and retention of niche talent, building a pipeline of readily deployable talent with the new emerging skills, finding and nurturing, talent equipped for global leadership positions and cost arbitrage have emerged as key challenging factors facing GCCs in India.

To navigate these challenges, the report said GCCs are leveraging innovative workforce strategy models, such as Hire-build-scale, borrow-- augment & co-create, to achieve near, medium, as well as long-term goals.

“These organizations are embracing a comprehensive approach that ensures a steady stream of skilled individuals ready to meet emerging and future business needs, with a focus on both talent demand forecasting and building a robust talent pipeline. Further, these GCCs are also implementing measures to develop future-ready leadership, leading deep functional capabilities and stepping up to handle global roles,” the report said.

As of FY23, India has over 1,580 GCCs, with an addition of multiple GCCs every quarter. Several factors such as access to a wide pool of digitally skilled talent, the drive to adopt new technologies and the imperative to make greater customer impact are driving the growth of the GCC ecosystem in the country. This growth trajectory over the next two to three years is expected to continue with the growing number of global players across sectors establishing deep capabilities, and building technology centres and transformation hubs.

However, this rapid growth and scale of GCCs has also brought to the forefront some associated challenges and considerations that need to be addressed as organizations continue to evolve. The paper identifies four considerations for GCCs as they move up the value chain. These include talent management, strategic emerging technology adoption, navigating regulations, and de-layering the concentration concerns.

“Over the last few years, we have witnessed a remarkable growth of GCCs in India with several factors driving its growth. As GCCs continue their growth trajectory, moving up the maturity curve, with factors such as blurring geographic borders, and technology disruptions, these centres are constantly scanning the dynamic risk landscape and adapting to successfully navigate through,” said Srikanth Srinivasan, Vice President at Nasscom.

“India as a nation, is gearing up to attract many more global players to establish and scale their GCCs over the next 3-5 years.  As these GCCs continue to build, innovate and scale, adopting new operating models influenced by the emerging technologies, they are also equipping themselves to navigate through a dynamic risk landscape and hence further fortifying the resilience of this model,” said Shalini Pillay, India Leader of Global Capability Centre, KPMG in India.