Global capability centres bet big on Indian talent to drive operations

Global capability centres (GCCs) of Goldman Sachs, NatWest, and Walmart are set to expand in the country and continue to count on Indian talent to drive their global operations as the industry looks set to add almost double the number of units from pre-Covid levels.

“The GCC segment used to add about 50 units every year. Last year 25 were added despite the pandemic. And this year, we expect with the pent-up demand, 75-100 GCCs are getting added,” said K S Viswanathan, vice-president (industry initiatives), National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom). 

Having come a long way from doing mere back-office operations for multinationals, GCCs are growing employment in double digits, and are catering to their parent enterprises to drive the digital transformation, Viswanathan said. 

Gunjan Samtani, head of Goldman Sachs Services India, said: “Our office in Bengaluru is the second-largest for Goldman Sachs globally and the investment that the firm is making in the talent of this country is long-term in nature. That commitment has had no wavering, either in (Covid) wave one or in wave two. We are one of the few companies that announced the launch of an office, in Hyderabad, in the middle of the pandemic ... We are now over 7,000 employees in our offices in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. And just this year, we have on-boarded 1,700 employees, and are looking to recruit hundreds more. We have 700 interns working with us in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.”

Hari Vasudev, country head and senior vice-president at Walmart Global Tech India, concurs. “India has never been a cost play for Walmart, it has always been a talent play,” he said.

“Walmart has been in India for more than 10 years now. India is the largest location for it outside the US and getting close to being the largest single location,” Vasudev added.

Last year the firm opened an office in Chennai, and has hired over 1,000 people at there. 

“With over a fifth of its global employees based here, NatWest India is like a microcosm of the parent firm. Technology, Data & Analytics, and AI/ML have a significant presence. Operations, Finance, and Risk also have a material presence. Even at the present time, hiring continues unabated, albeit the skill mix being hired has changed,” said Punit Sood, head of India operations, NatWest Group. 

The GCC sector comprises over 1,300 global organisations, which employ more than 1.3 million people and generated $33.8 billion in annual revenue in FY20, a recent report by Nasscom and Deloitte found. The sector contributes $99-103 billion of gross output and pays $5.4-5.6 billion in taxes, it said. 

As businesses think of ways to bring back employees to the workplace, helped by Covid-19 vaccinations picking up pace, GCCs are taking a different approach. 

“Half our organisation anyway had a hybrid work model, and half the organisation used to be working from more modern offices,” said Sood. NatWest is looking at giving choices to people within a framework, asking employees to model scenarios and decide how much real estate will work in a given geographical location.

The industry feels that real estate is more of an investment than a cost.  The investment, they feel, is more in terms of the people, the tools, and the training that goes around it.

While many roles at Walmart support hybrid work and work from home, being a retailer it has unique challenges. Many of its employees in India have been on the front line -- those working in the stores, people moving items in inventories and supply chains, pharmacists, drivers in the transportation fleet, and others.

“A lot of our effort during Covid has been round how we keep that workforce safe,” said Vasudev. 

The firm enabled contactless shopping for customers, where people chose to have their items propped up on the front door, the Walmart executive will take a picture and upload it, and then a notification will get triggered to the customer so that he or she can collect their shopping. 

The job profiles GCCs are looking at are also evolving, said Viswanathan. It is no longer just pure, hard-core technology-based roles that find place in these centres.

“We are looking at product design, product engineering, collaborative, agile -- this kind of talent pool is now coming up,” he said.