TN GIM 2024: No doubt that India is the GCC capital of the world, says SAP Labs India’s Sindhu Gangadharan

Sindhu Gangadharan, MD, SAP Labs India

SAP's top executive Sindhu Gangadharan said that India is not just a talent hub but is also driving demand, which makes it attractive for top companies to set up global capability centers (GCCs) here.

Her comments come at a time when GCCs have been growing at a feverish pace in India, as more global firms look to tap into the country’s talent pool. She added that these GCCs are creating more than 5,000 global leadership roles from the country.

This is expected to grow 4X to over 20,000 global leadership roles where young talent will be empowered and tasked with end-to-end product ownership by 2030, Gangadharan, SVP and MD, SAP Labs India said.

GCCs refer to offshore captive technology facilities and units of large MNCs aimed at majorly building in-house technology and innovative R&D capabilities,  but can also include other organisational functions like HR, finance, IT, analytics and other support verticals.

Gangadharan was speaking with Kewyn George, global director, information services, Expeditors in a fire side chat on ‘GCCs becoming the new growth engine fueling the economy’, at the Tamil Nadu Global Investors Meet 2024 on January 7.

She said, “Today there’s no doubt that India is the GCC capital of the world. We are talking of a market of over $35 billion which is driven GCCs. GCCs contribute more than 1 percent to India’s GDP and that number is only increasing.”

She shared that there are more than 1,500 GCCs in India for the world. This is driven by availability of talent here, which is more than 1.38 million and the engineering prowess that is fueling this transformation.

Today, GCCs in India are driving large scale business and digital transformations for their parents from here for the world. About 42 percent of the product leadership is happening out of GCCs in India. Even IPs (intellectual properties) are getting created in India for the world, she said.

According to Gangadharan, both product ownership and thought leadership in now born out of India, which gives the country engineering prowess along with a combination of market opportunity to the global companies. It’s the fastest growing region for many of the organisations.

The markets too have also shifted from the west to the east. India is now the fastest growing economy, second largest digital economy, top three countries in terms of STEM talent, and has a trillion-dollar SaaS market opportunity, she said.

Even for SAP, nearly 40 percent of its global R&D workforce sits out of India and is the largest R&D team outside its headquarters. In fact, India has the entire breadth of SAP’s product portfolio available.

The evolution of GCCs, however, too saw some significant shifts in India. The country’s talent went from being an extended bench of workforce about 15 years ago to now co-creating IPs for global conglomerates. Gangadharan believes that there’s still work to be done in bridging cultural gaps better and keeping continued focus on building talent and skilling at different levels.

In terms of Tamil Nadu’s opportunities in the GCC space, she highlighted, “Around 25 percent of R&D talent comes from Chennai in India. Coimbatore contributes highest number of ER&D talent among Tier-2 cities in India.”

George concurred, adding, “We have close to 200 plus GCCs in Tamil Nadu and 150,000 engineers, making it a preferred destination for setting up GCCs.”