Why Purpose, Ownership & Measurable Business Outcomes Will D…

The accelerating evolution of global capability centres (GCCs) and their growing strategic influence on multinational enterprises was a topic of deep discussion during a session at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2025, where leaders from healthcare, insurance and retail examined how India’s GCCs are reshaping global business value. 

In a panel titled ‘Redefining Global Business Through GCCs – The Value Matrix’, industry heads from Siemens Healthineers, Swiss Re and JCPenney discussed the shift from cost-driven operations to ownership, innovation, AI-led transformation and enterprise-level impact.

They argued that India’s GCCs must now be measured by business outcomes, not cost arbitrage. 

The discussion featured Kaushik Das, managing director of JCPenney; Amit Kalra, managing director and head of Swiss Re Global Business Solutions; and Kalavathi GV, executive director and head of the global development centre at Siemens Healthineers.

Opening the conversation, Kalavathi said the rapid growth of GCCs, now nearly 1,800 in India, has pushed centres beyond execution to owning the “why” behind their work. 

Using med-tech as an example, she said value today is defined by business impact, such as patient touchpoints, IP generation, global roles, time-to-market improvements and taking products from concept to scale. 

For Siemens Healthineers, Kalavathi revealed, India now houses over half of its software engineering workforce and leads end-to-end development of products like the mobile C-arm surgical imaging system, which is designed and manufactured in India and exported globally. 

AI-enabled diagnostics, including a radiology companion that can increase reporting efficiency by up to 43%, are also being developed at the India centre, positioning the country as a driver of both innovation and access, she added.

Kalra stressed that true value creation requires aligning Indian centres with the enterprise’s core purpose rather than treating GCCs as separate entities. 

In insurance and reinsurance, he added, the business value chain, actuarial, underwriting, modelling, risk management and technology, must remain integrated, and India’s contribution should be measured by its role in global outcomes. 

He described how Swiss Re’s early accelerator model had evolved from “letting a thousand flowers bloom” into a focused innovation strategy tied directly to business priorities. 

He noted that while India’s talent base and ecosystem have matured, the industry is still heavily execution-led, with only a small share of global strategic roles located in GCCs. 

The next leap, he said, must be a shift from execution to ownership, supported by domain expertise, leadership depth and distributed decision-making.

Kaushik Das said retail GCCs have become essential to driving customer-facing outcomes, with India teams increasingly making core business decisions, from assortment and sizing to store dispatches. 

In the newly formed Catalyst brands group, which includes JCPenney, he said the key value metric is elevating customer satisfaction, and GCCs contribute through both ground-up and top-down innovation. 

He cited examples, including augmented-reality beauty solutions developed in India, and said that the maturity of retail GCCs now allows them to deploy disruptive solutions globally. 

Value, he said, is no longer about reporting cost metrics but about directly influencing enterprise-level goals.

A debate on whether GCCs should separately report value metrics saw all three leaders agree that measures must mirror those of the enterprise. 

Kalra argued that creating GCC-specific metrics distances centres from headquarters and undermines one-team culture. 

He said hygiene indicators like engagement, diversity, attrition and operational resilience are necessary, but strategic metrics should tie back to global KPIs and business impact. 

Kalavathi added that value metrics should highlight revenue influence, compliance, IP and customer outcomes, while Das said the true test of a mature centre is its place in the company’s strategic roadmap.

On generative AI, Kalavathi said the healthcare sector is using AI models to bridge workforce shortages and accelerate clinical decision-making, with India playing a major role in integrating AI into global product lifecycles. 

Siemens Healthineers’ GenAI Centre of Competence in India, she said, works across functions to speed up R&D, customer service, marketing and operational processes. 

Kalra said organisations need a dual approach, prioritising high-impact, top-down AI initiatives and democratisation, ensuring every employee improves productivity through AI. 

Das added that GCCs must strengthen data readiness, infrastructure, workforce education and ecosystem partnerships before scaling AI applications.

Closing the session, the panel offered brief calls to action for GCC leaders. Kalra called for boldness and courage, while Das said leaders must stay aligned with enterprise strategy and “own” their mandates.

The post Why Purpose, Ownership & Measurable Business Outcomes Will Decide the Future of GCCs appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Generated by RSStT. The copyright belongs to the original author.

Source