GCCs prefer hiring leaders from peers than IT services companies

Mint

09-05-2025

Backend technology centres of the world's largest companies are increasingly hiring senior executives from peers as compared with information technology (IT) services companies, indicating a preference for innovative work, domain knowledge and better understanding of captive offices.
A little over a third–or 36%–of executives with more than eight years of work experience hired by global capacity centres or GCCs came from rivals in the year ended March 2025, according to a report by Xpheno, a Pune-based staffing firm. That's an increase from 28% in the year March 2023. By comparison, the share of middle and senior executives hired from the IT services sector during the period shrank from 50% to 40%.
IT products and startups account for the remaining hires by GCCs, according to the findings based on a study of the 'top' 120 GCCs in India that employ 1.35 million people–or over three-fourths of the total active workforce of such centres.
The preference for senior executives from within the GCCs marks a significant shift when more global roles of Fortune companies are shifting to India. According to IT industry lobby National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), there are 6,500 global roles in India for the country's 1,760 global capability centres (GCCs). This number is expected to jump almost fivefold in the next five years to 30,000.
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"GCCs, which are increasingly looking for more innovation, want talent that has been involved in innovative work in the past rather than those who deliver transactional services. Some GCCs have groomed leaders who have led such transformations, leading to the rise in hiring from peer GCCs," said Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Xpheno.
'The mandate of some of the tenured and new GCCs has moved to transformation and innovation. So culturally and operationally, that's a different DNA," he said. 'Hence, hiring leaders from these GCCs experiences is a culturally better fit and gets them to a quicker operational speed."
More global focus
GCCs are back-end offices of top foreign companies such as Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Boeing and Walmart that handle work related to IT, sales, human resources, marketing, and supply chain management. More than 875, or half of the country's GCCs, are based in Bengaluru, while Hyderabad has about 355. The rest are located in cities such as Delhi NCR, Pune, and Chennai. Nasscom estimates the number of Indian GCCs will hit 2,200 by March 2030, with a market size of $105 billion.
To be sure, the bulk of the workforce in such centres still comes from IT services companies. These captives hire in two primary ways: freshers from colleges during campus placements, and lateral hires from IT outsourcers, other GCCs, startups, and software product companies.
While GCCs and IT services companies cover similar roles, there is a difference in their approach, which is reflected in hiring preference.
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'Being in the GCC, you think like the parent company and are a lot more business-focused than in an IT services firm, where you concentrate in performing a piece of work that has been given to you by the customer," said Aveek Mukherjee, co-founder of Gloplax. 'The responsibilities of senior GCC managers are lot more global and take into account all the constituents including strong people skills, specialised in-house capabilities, and cross-functional expertise."
In the past, leadership switches at GCCs were not just limited to executives of the same industry.
Jaideep Agarwal took over as the India global business solutions (GBS) leader for Warner Bros. Discovery in February 2023. He had served as the managing director of Goldman Sachs in India until June 2022, before serving as an independent consultant.
Sirisha Voruganti was appointed as the chief executive of Lloyds Tech Centre India in July 2023. She earlier served as the managing director of JCPenney in India.
Contextual knowledge
However, Viswanathan K.S., digital transformation advisor and former Nasscom vice-president of industry initiatives, said executives from captive centres and those from the same sector come with more contextual knowledge than those from IT services companies.
'IT services companies prepare people as technologists, whereas GCCs prefer those with tech, domain and contextual knowledge," said Viswanathan K.S., digital transformation advisor and former Nasscom vice-president of industry initiatives. 'Suppose a person is being hired for the role of a delivery manager in a retail outlet. They must not just have technical knowledge, but also have a sense of warehousing, loyalty programs, and groceries in general."
At least half a dozen executives have taken up leadership roles in GCCs of the same domain in the past three years.
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Naveen Gullapalli took over as managing director of Amgen India's technology and innovation centres in December 2024. He previously headed the global business solutions team at Novartis, a company where he spent 13 years.
Arindam Banerrji took over as India head of State Street in October 2023 after a five-year stint at Wells Fargo, where he last served as its executive vice-president and managing director for India and Philippines.
"Any hiring preference is truly driven by the role and the required skill sets," said Mukherjee.
'A GCC leader when looking for talent, especially at senior levels, would place greater value on the in-depth firsthand experience gained by a delivery/product manager within a GCC construct. This preference gets stronger when it comes to hiring for niche roles with experience in the same industry or domain-specific capabilities," said Mukherjee.
Intellectual 'echo chamber'
Still, hiring senior executives familiar with GCCs could pose a different challenge.
"What appears as comfortable familiarity masks a deeper challenge: when the same leadership talent circulates between centers with only the logo changing, we risk creating an intellectual echo chamber that values predictability over transformation," said Kaushik Srinivasan, chief executive of KaN Associates.
He added that GCCs could work around this nuance a little better.
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'The most visionary GCCs recognize that while contextual understanding is valuable, true innovation often comes from integrating perspectives from product companies and consulting firms that challenge established paradigms," he said. 'The centres that thrive will be those that balance the safety of proven GCC experience with the disruption of fresh industry perspectives."