Saying no to commoditised work

Some GCC leaders are focusing on innovation that delivers biz outcomes for parent companies

Global capability centre (GCC) stories have traditionally tended to focus on the numbers of people they hire. And they have indeed become perhaps the biggest hirer of white-collar talent in India.

That’s wonderful. But there’s also increasing recognition that as technologies like AI become integral to every operation, GCC sustainability can no longer be only about numbers. And that was the premise on which we partnered with Nasscom to do a multi-city programme to discuss what’s necessary to sustain the amazing India GCC phenomenon.

In the process we discovered fascinating new stories. We were particularly struck by the similarity of language among two global pharma companies. At our Mumbai event last month, we had Raja Jamalamadaka, MD of Roche Digital Centre of Excellence India, saying that “to hold the hand of innovation focus, we have to leave the hand of focus on size and scale.” He said the GCC is focused on doing high quality of work and innovation, and much of the rest is outsourced.

At our Hyderabad event last week, Mohit Dhingra, managing director of Bristol Myers Squibb India, made a very similar point. He said he says ₹no’ to any work that he thinks is commoditised. “You’ll be surprised how many times I have to say ₹no’. The cost arbitrage or the labour arbitrage play is so comfortable and so easy; anybody who wants to put roles here for thousands of people can easily do it. But did you get the right quality work that is driving an outcome for the business, or did you just get some commoditised work? I think as leaders we have to be very selective of what we bring in,” he said.

His India centre only does the general shift, and refuses to do any work that might involve a second or night shift. “These are bold leadership calls we have to make. And that’s going to be our make or break going forward. If you get a lot of roles, some 50% of them are going to be automated, and that won’t help the white collar jobs,” he said.

Drug development takes 10-15 years and could cost over $2 billion. Bristol Myers Squibb, Dhingra said, is “obsessed” with using AI across the process – from molecule discovery and clinical trials to manufacturing and commercialisation – to dramatically reduce timelines and costs. And the India centre, with 3,000 people, has become central to this.

Leading with AI & blockchainSanthanam Govindraj, CTO of Broadridge Financial Solutions India, also underlined the focus on innovation at the US financial technology company’s GCC in India. “A lot of our parent company’s innovations come out of India,” he said, and noted that’s the way to help parent companies grow. “Leverage AI, leverage all the modern tech, the energy of the workforce coming from campuses, to help our enterprises grow. With that, we will all grow,” he said.

He noted a number of blockchain-based work done by the India centre. The pinnacle of this, he said, would be the digital ledger, conceptualised by an India team. “This may be the largest enterprise grade blockchain out there. We process $400 billion worth of US treasuries as repos every single day. The next leap for blockchain is tokenisation. The US is very intentional on tokenising securities in its markets. Broadridge is working on tokenisation solutions, and a lot of that work comes from India,” he said.

Kiran Cherukuri, global GCC practice head at HCLTech, said tech service providers can give GCCs a leg up on innovation with the platforms many of them have developed for implementing AI. These platforms, he said, sharply reduce development timelines.