EPAM working with over 50 large GCCs in India on manpower, product development

The company operates in three different models in collaboration with GCCs in India

The US-based information technology (IT) company EPAM Systems is working with over 50 large global capability centres (GCCs) in India to build their engineering team and product development.

The services, however, come at premium when compared to its larger and smaller peers due to better quality engineering and practises, the company told Moneycontrol.

“We also have a global programme which extends to India to design the next generation of managed service and that is of interest to GCCs as well,” said Elaina Shekhter, chief marketing and strategy officer at EPAM. The New York Stock Exchange-listed company also plans to hire about 600 people this year to its 8,000-strong workforce in India. The total global strength of the company is roughly about 52,000.

In recent years, the partnership between GCCs and IT companies has been gaining traction to cater to the rising demand and expand customer base, debunking earlier apprehensions that GCCs might eat up on their revenue streams.

GCCs, which are dedicated offshore centres set up by a company to in-source IT and other related business functions, have been expanding at a frenetic pace in India in the last few years, as more global corporations look to build their own software service and product fixations.

The company highlighted that the difference between EPAM's collaboration with GCCs as compared to other IT companies’ partnership, is the better skilled workforce that supports these captives.

“They look at us more in line with the kind of engineers they hire, I am talking about big technology companies, big healthcare companies, some of the largest companies banks here,” Srinivas Reddy, managing director of EPAM India, told Moneycontrol.

The company operates in three different models in collaboration with GCCs in India. Most of these GCCs are well-established and have had a presence in India for 15-20 years.

In the first model, the company’s nature of partnership includes working with clients along with either two or three other large vendors. GCCs prefer EPAM’s better engineering services and quality engineering practices when working on product platforms and innovation, the company said.

“Honestly, it comes at a slightly higher price point, we are all playing in the India market,” Reddy said. “People want to get to market fast, they want to build product, they want to innovate and that’s where we work.”

Shekhter said that managed services will take the company some more time to create the right mix because GCCs are mostly interested in building products and future teams rather than a service.

Managed IT services involve a third-party handling tasks to maintain processes and functions, leading to improved operations and reduced budgetary expenditures.

“(With the) use of tooling, they should be able to run as next gen managed services and we are doing that, and that’s the second business model,” Shekhter said. Adding that EPAM has converted half a dozen models into new managed services model in India, based on the existing working relationship with the client.

“It is not going to be a cost play for us (but) a value play, which means we can bring more automation, AI operation,” Shekhter further said.

The third one is the build and operate model, in which EPAM assists clients in setting up and launching their GCCs. “We will leverage not just their engineering talent but also what we have gained experience in our recruitment in general, our HR processes, our learning systems in the first few years to help them accelerate the setup,” Reddy said.

The company’s focus in this model is on building engineering teams and client’s products platforms, rather than looking at new clients and helping them with deciding their location and compliance, etc.