The mango that broke a market
It is peak mango season in India. The Alphonso harvest is at its richest, the Kesar at its most fragrant.
India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are accelerating their shift from AI experimentation to full-scale deployment, with 58% already investing in Agentic AI and another 29% planning to scale within a year, according to the EY GCC Pulse Survey 2025 released on Sunday.
The findings signal a decisive transformation in the role of India-based GCCs, which are rapidly evolving into strategic decision-making and innovation hubs for global enterprises. This shift is being fuelled by rising GenAI adoption, deeper digital maturity and expanding organisational mandates.
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The survey gathered responses from GCC leaders across sectors between August and October 2025. Respondents reported an average headcount of 800 employees.
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GenAI adoption continues to rise across the GCC landscape, with 83% of centres already investing in the technology. Pilots increased from 37% in 2024 to 43% this year, supported by widespread upskilling: 81% of GCCs have trained internal teams on GenAI.
GCCs are prioritising GenAI use cases that deliver immediate business impact — customer service (65%), finance (53%), operations (49%) and IT and cybersecurity (45%). EY describes Agentic AI as the “next frontier” of intelligent automation, marking a rapid shift from experimentation to enterprise-scale implementation.
Two-thirds (67%) of GCCs have set up dedicated innovation teams and incubation platforms, strengthening structured idea pipelines that are increasingly being globalised. EY also announced its Intelligent GCC solution suite aimed at helping organisations design AI-native centres and embed autonomous intelligence across value chains.
India-based GCCs are now taking on responsibilities traditionally held by corporate headquarters. Over half (52%) share accountability for global decisions, while 26% are consulted regularly. Another 20% are moving toward full ownership of select global functions.
Top GCC priorities include digital transformation (61%), cost reduction (54%) and functional expansion (51%). Centres are allocating the largest share of their budgets to technology and transformation (25%), followed by talent and workforce development (23%).
Operating model preferences continue to evolve: 92% of GCCs aim to deliver value beyond cost arbitrage, 87% plan to manage end-to-end global processes and 84% continue to operate in-house, although outsourcing has risen to 12%, the report said.
Bengaluru remains the leading GCC hub (46%), followed by Pune (39%) and Hyderabad (24%). Emerging tier-2 centres such as Ahmedabad and Jaipur are also beginning to see increased activity.
Talent priorities remain strong, with GCCs focusing on reskilling (71%), tech-led growth (70%) and niche hiring in areas such as domain expertise (66%), AI/ML (63%) and data engineering/BI (54%). Attrition declined to 9% in 2025, down from 13% in 2023.
Cybersecurity maturity remains moderate, with only 7% of GCCs reporting fully embedded Cyber Centres of Excellence. Oversight of third-party data access improved significantly, rising from 44% to 60% year-on-year.
Workforce-related risks including niche talent shortages, rising people costs and retention challenges emerged as the most significant risk category. Transfer pricing remains the top regulatory hurdle (63%), followed by compliance complexity and data privacy concerns (42%).
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