EY's report “Future of GCCs in India - A Vision 2030,” identifies the GCCs' expansion in India as a key technology-linked shift. Aiding India’s drive to become a global tech and services leader, the GCC domestic market, at present $45 billion, could escalate to $110 billion by 2030.
This development, the report indicates, would be accelerated by the growth as the Indian talent pool, supportive infrastructure, and a favorable business environment bolster progress. Numbers demonstrate the trajectory, with GCCs rising from 2,400 presently to about 2,550 by the forecasted date.
Source: EY “Future of GCCs in India - A Vision 2030”
Today, GCCs function as innovation centers and strategic enablers, optimizing efficiency, cutting operational costs, and driving advancements in areas such as software development, product engineering, and service delivery for global enterprises.
However, GCCs must face and overcome complex challenges to maintain success. Approaching 2025, these challenges are more pronounced. In this blog, we analyze the four key obstacles GCCs need to address to continue prospering and realizing their full capabilities.
Obstacle 1: The “Big Center” Syndrome
With the growth of GCCs, the constraints offered by the “big center” syndrome, which are due to centralized large-scale operations, become more apparent. While these popular geographical locations have been pillars in the past for setting up large-scale operations, these centers now face challenges that can potentially reduce their efficiency.
The Limitations of Large, Centralized GCCs:
- High Operational Costs: The concentration facilities have to bear higher costs for real estate, utilities, and employee benefits, especially in prime urban areas.
- Talent Challenges: With increasingly saturated job markets, it's getting tougher and more expensive to attract and retain skilled professionals.
- Slow Response Times: Being geographically far from the key markets, it may be difficult for a center to respond quickly to business needs or collaborate effectively.
- Heightened Vulnerability: Centralized operations are much more vulnerable to natural disasters, pandemics, or geopolitical unrest that could enforce downtime in large measures.
The Case for Smaller, More Distributed Centers:
- Improved Agility: The smaller centers will have better response times to changing market dynamics and business requirements, hence encouraging innovation and quicker decision-making.
- Access to Local Talent Pools: Located in proximity to diversified talent hubs, it enables GCCs to access a wider and often less competitive labor market.
- Reduced Operational Risks: Decentralizing the operations will reduce regional disruption impacts, hence having minimal stops in business operations.
- Improved Customer Proximity: Locating centers closer to key customers enables better relationships, speedier problem resolution, and increased service delivery.
Obstacle 2: End-to-End Product Development Challenges
A move to add end-to-end product development to an innovation hub appears to be ambitious but full of difficulty, especially when regarding hardware or devices. Project work for offshore development of goods takes more than an effort if it requires activities beyond using just software. That’s why end-to-end device development will soon overstep GCCs’ role in project work.
Key Challenges in End-to-End Product Development:
- Integrating Software and Hardware Teams: There can't be a seamless collaboration between software and hardware teams since the disciplines are different, with different workflows, timelines, and priorities.
- Managing Complex Supply Chains: Hardware product engineering requires effective supply chain management, which includes dealing with several vendors, meeting strict timelines, and managing associated risks.
- Ensuring Product Quality and Compliance: The complexity increases with the need for product quality and regulatory standards in different parts of the world.
- Building and Maintaining Strong External Relationships: Very often, hardware development is dependent on collaborations with third-party manufacturers or suppliers who have to be managed diligently for trust to build.
Strategies for Overcoming These Challenges:
- Investing in Robust Product Development Methodologies: Agile, iterative methods guarantee collaboration from the outset to the end of product development between the software and hardware teams.
- Building Strong Cross-Functional Teams: Assembling multidisciplinary teams of experts in hardware design, software development, supply chain management, and compliance fosters a better-integrated development process.
- Leveraging Strategic Partnerships: Partnerships with technology providers, manufacturing companies, and suppliers shall close the gap in know-how, and operational efficiency, and reduce time to market.
Obstacle 3: Talent Acquisition and Retention
A key finding from the EY GCC Pulse Survey 2021 indicates that 74% of respondents perceive GCCs as emerging global centers for digital expertise and innovation. As these regions gain more importance, they are concentrating on the 3Cs approach to talent management: capability, costs, and value creation. Yet, the quest for top talent in an increasingly fierce global competition is a significant hurdle.
The Challenges of Attracting and Retaining Top Talent in a Competitive Global Market:
- Competition from Other Companies and Industries: Any field related to technology or digitization that is in demand also faces tremendous competition—be it from other GCCs and startups to existing IT giants who expand far from their traditional circle.
- The Rise of Remote Work: While the shift to remote and hybrid work models opened up the talent pool, it also means that GCCs have to adapt their talent acquisition strategies to attract and manage a geographically diverse workforce.
- Employee Engagement and Motivation: Both of these are quite hard to instill in employees, especially in a fast-moving and competitive working environment. The pressure of meeting business goals can sometimes lead to burnout and disengagement.
The Strategies to Address These Challenges:
- Building Strong Employer Brands: An attractive employer brand reflecting the values, culture, and growth opportunities of an organization can facilitate attracting the best talent and help GCCs distinguish themselves in a crowded marketplace.
- Offering Competitive Compensation and Benefits Packages: Offer attractive remunerations, performance-based incentives, and health & wellness benefits, among others, in order to remain competitive within the talent market.
- Investing in Employee Development and Career Growth: Opportunities for the development of skills, certification, and well-structured prospects for career growth increase retention and satisfaction among employees.
- Fostering a Positive and Inclusive Work Culture: Building a workplace where employees feel wanted, respected, and included definitely enhances overall engagement and motivation, leading to long-term retention of all
Obstacle 4: Cybersecurity Risks
Global costs of cybercrime are predicted to rise sharply over the next four years from having totaled $9.22 trillion in 2024 to an estimated $13.82 trillion by 2028. With escalating cybersecurity threats, it has emerged quite as a pivotal economy—India ranks as the most attacked economy with 13.7% of the global attack incidents. Interestingly, 28% of global corporates have more than half of their cybersecurity employees in India, while 17% have 75% or more of their teams in the country.
The Growing Cybersecurity Threats Facing GCCs:
- Data Breaches: Exposure of sensitive customer data, business data, or employee data continues to be a top priority, and attackers can use sophisticated ways to gain access.
- Ransomware Attacks: Valuable data can be encrypted by ransomware attacks, with the restoration of access coming at a price, hence can significantly disrupt GCC activities.
- Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs): State-sponsored or highly skilled adversaries often attack GCCs, embedding deep inside the networks to persistently extract information.
Key Cybersecurity Measures:
- Implementing Strong Access Controls and Data Encryption: Limiting access to only a few critical systems and encrypting all sensitive data can minimize unauthorized breaches considerably.
- Regular Security Audits and Penetration Testing: Proactive assessments and testing help find vulnerabilities and make sure that systems remain resilient against evolving threats.
- Employee Cybersecurity Training: Human error is one of the highest causes of cyber incidents (95%). That is why comprehensive training could be a great way to empower people to recognize and respond to imminent threats.
- Building Stronger Partnerships with Cybersecurity Vendors: Engaging expert cybersecurity service providers ensures the capability to access fresh solutions with minimal risks employing managed security services.
Conclusion
In summary, the road to achievement for GCCs in 2025 is marked by challenges. These encompass battling operational inefficiencies, managing end-to-end product creation intricacies, securing skilled personnel, and safeguarding against cyber threats. These issues, sizable yet demanding, provide GCCs chances to pioneer, adjust, and flourish in an intensively competitive global field.
For GCCs to surpass these challenges and maximize their potential, they require a reliable technology partner with substantial know-how and a successful delivery history.
At Gadgeon, we assist GCCs in speeding up their digital transformation through customized solutions in areas such as product engineering, IoT, embedded systems, cloud, mobile solutions, and next-gen tech including AI, ML, and Gen AI. Backed by over a decade of experience and industry knowledge across healthcare, telecom, e-commerce, manufacturing, and others, we aid GCCs in improving operations, boosting productivity, and fostering long-term growth.
Let’s shape the future of your GCC together. Contact Gadgeon today to accelerate your journey to success.
