Analysis by specialist staffing firm Xpheno Research shows that in the case of 145 GCCs set up in the last 30 months, 40 per cent of site leaders came from within other GCCs,
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Sumedha Lakmal
Gone are the days when if a company was setting up or scaling a global capability centre (GCC) in India, the choice of leader would most likely be an executive from an IT services or consulting background. But as GCCs in India mature, leaders are increasingly emerging from within the ecosystem.
Lowe’s India, AP Moller-Maersk, Wells Fargo, Eli Lilly, McDonald’s, Papa John’s, Chevron, Vanguard, Workday are just a few enterprises that have recently picked leaders from other GCCs or CXOs from within their own global teams to lead their India GCCs.
Analysis by specialist staffing firm Xpheno Research shows that in the case of 145 GCCs set up in the last 30 months, 40 per cent of site leaders came from within other GCCs, 24 per cent from internal movements from within the company, 14 per cent from product firms, and only 17 per cent from IT services.
A mature ecosystem
“As recent as 2022 and early 2023, GCCs used to source nearly one-third of senior talent from IT services firms,” Kamal Karanth, Co-founder, Xpheno, says. The shift in origins of GCC leadership indicates a fast-maturing GCC ecosystem and suggests GCCs are becoming more self-sufficient in senior talent sourcing, he added. With GCCs being set up with mandates to be innovation centres for their parent company, product companies are also being tapped to scout for leaders, he adds.
Arindam Sen, Partner and GCC sector leader – Technology, Media & Entertainment and Telecommunications, EY India, says there is a definitive shift, with a majority of GCC leadership roles today being filled from within the GCC ecosystem itself.
“These are leaders who understand the operating model, stakeholder expectations, and the need to drive transformation from India. Earlier, many such roles were filled from IT services or consulting, but that’s changing fast,” he says. Leaders are now also being hired for product, engineering and innovation mindsets, not just operations and delivery excellence, he adds.
Smitha Hemmigae, MD, ANSR, also says today leaders at new GCCs are primarily picked from older cohorts. After this, product leaders are tapped and then comes IT services, she said. The pace of growth in the GCC leadership pool has also prompted ANSR to partner with the Indian School of Business (ISB) to launch a GCC leadership programme to equip future GCC leaders with required skills. “This way we hope to prepare a pipeline of future GCC site leaders,” she says.
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Published on June 1, 2025
