Operations Director
EQ India
With nearly 3,000 Global Capability Centres (GCC) in India, employing 1.9 million people, these offshore hubs are today the backbone of any multinational corporate entity. While cost arbitrage and an abundance of English-speaking talent certainly acted as an impetus for the growth in GCC numbers in India, they are also increasingly managing a complex global risk landscape.
According to a recent Dun & Bradstreet-Cushman Wakefield report on ‘Rethinking the Future of Global Capability Centres’, “risk management is no longer a back-office function —it is a core business enabler” with GCCs now expected to tackle threats to cyber security, data privacy, regulatory shifts, supply chain disruptions and geopolitical instability. In order to maintain their competitive edge, GCCs will need to increasingly adopt a proactive stance to tackling these challenges, rather than remaining reactive.
Key Challenges for Indian GCCs
Geopolitical instability, be it in the form of an armed conflict or trade and tariff wars have emerged as one of the major risks for GCCs as they lead to cost escalation and disruption of operations. For example,the entire overhaul of the tariff structure by the US administration will lead to reworking of expenses or if there are any restrictions imposed on transfer of data from one geographical location to another, it can also increase costs.
The biggest risk for GCCs still remains cyber security threats, including ransomware attacks, phishing or nation-state hacks. According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the global cost of cybercrime in 2024 stood at $9.22 trillion and is expected to rise to $13.82 trillion by 2028, with India being the most targeted country for cyber-attacks, accounting for nearly 14% of such attacks. What complicates this challenge for India GCCs is the acute talent supply gap of cyber security professionals, with a shortage of 8 lakh personnel (as against a global shortage of 40 lakh worldwide).
It isn’t just cyber-security professionals who are in great demand – Indian GCCs are battling a huge talent supply crunch as the challenge remains to find and retain talent with the right skills. According to a survey published in a KPMG-Nasscom report on ‘GCCs in India: Building Resilience for Sustainable Growth’, more than 72% of GCC leaders “identified talent management as a key priority for GCCs.” The report adds that GCCs in India are grappling with “talent availability, capability and employability”. This shortage spans cloud, AI, cybersecurity and even leadership roles.
Risk-Management Strategies
Leading GCCs in India have adopted an Integrated Governance Framework by creating Centres of Excellence (CoE) that enable oversight of all risks under one centralised governance office. These CoE integrate corporate policies wit local laws to ensure regulatory compliance, be it issues related to taxation, labour laws, data security and privacy, ethics, etc.
In fact, adoption of AI-powered analytics can help centralised security dashboards flag, in real time, any unusual patterns in order to detect fraud or suspicious log-ins. This in turn can help GCCs pre-empt any threats or risks to their data.
With GCCs facing a critical talent shortage, talent management remains a key component for their successful operational continuity. Apart from hiring the right fit, GCCs need to invest in reskilling programmes, such as retraining of software engineers as cyber-security experts, incorporating global rotations that allow sharing of best practices and building a leadership role bench strength.
Finally, given that proactive is always better than being reactive, GCCs need to have simulation models ready to be executed for what-if scenarios – when a crisis actually hits. These stress tests enable organisations to find any chinks in their operational readiness and could involve ‘chaos engineering’ exercises such as simulated data breaches, network outages or market fluctuations. It could also include simulation models for paradigm shifts in the economic or geopolitical scenario that can allow for fine-tuning of contingency plans. After all, those that adapt and adopt will not just survive, but also thrive.
–Authored by Mr. Sreekesh C – Operations Director, EQ India
