India’s GCC story is entering a new phase.
For years, the dominant question was whether enterprises should build in India at all. Today, for many leaders, the more important question is how to design a GCC in India so it can scale, adapt and create measurable value over time.
That shift changes the location conversation. A modern GCC strategy is no longer only about selecting one flagship city and hiring for volume. It is about building an operating model that gives the enterprise better access to talent, stronger resilience, and the flexibility to grow new capabilities as business needs evolve. In that context, emerging and established hubs such as Coimbatore, Madurai, Pune and Hyderabad are not simply alternatives to a primary location. They are part of a more deliberate, distributed model for building AI-first GCCs.
This matters because the role of the GCC itself has changed. GCCs are no longer defined mainly by cost optimization or delivery capacity. They are increasingly expected to contribute to product innovation, engineering execution, data and AI adoption, customer and employee experience, and day-to-day business operations. They are becoming tightly connected extensions of the business, accountable for outcomes rather than throughput alone.
As that mandate expands, a single-city model can become restrictive. Concentrating talent, leadership and execution in one place may feel simpler at the start, but it can also narrow access to skills, create dependency on one labor market and limit how quickly the GCC can diversify into new disciplines. Enterprises that want to modernize core systems, move AI from pilot to production and support more resilient operations need a broader design lens.
A distributed GCC model offers that lens. It allows organizations to connect capability to need across multiple locations, rather than forcing every team, role and workflow into the same local market. In practice, that can help enterprises build more multidisciplinary structures across engineering, product, cloud, data and AI while reducing reliance on any single city. It also creates more room to scale in phases, adding new talent pools and functional depth as the GCC matures.
Publicis Sapient’s approach reflects this reality. Our distributed delivery model helps enterprises access broader talent pools, reduce concentration risk and build more flexible teams across India. With a footprint that includes Coimbatore, Madurai, Pune and Hyderabad, we support a model in which local execution is connected to global business priorities through integrated capabilities spanning Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering, and Data & AI. That matters because the strongest GCCs are not built as isolated delivery towers. They are built as connected systems that can evolve with the enterprise.
This is especially relevant for organizations establishing a new GCC. Early design decisions around location can shape far more than hiring. They influence how ownership is structured, how leaders collaborate across functions, how quickly capabilities can be added, and how resilient the model remains under pressure. An AI-first GCC needs more than technical depth in one domain. It requires cross-functional coordination, clear governance, and the ability to align modernization, workflow design, platform engineering and operational performance over time.
That is why location strategy should be treated as part of GCC design, not just a real estate decision. A well-designed regional footprint can support different forms of growth at different stages. One location may anchor engineering delivery. Another may strengthen product, cloud or data capabilities. Another may help extend multidisciplinary teams and create more operational flexibility. The point is not to fragment the center. It is to build a structure that supports enterprise priorities more effectively.
For existing GCCs, the same principle applies. Scaling is not just about adding headcount. It is about evolving the center into a future-ready, innovation-driven hub. A distributed model can help established GCCs broaden their mandate, strengthen performance and create more durable access to talent as the work becomes more strategic. It can also help organizations redesign legacy assumptions about offshore capacity and instead build a GCC that is better suited for continuous modernization and AI-led transformation.
This becomes even more important when enterprises want the GCC to function as an execution engine for AI. Production-grade AI work depends on more than data science talent alone. It requires product ownership, workflow orchestration, engineering rigor, governance and resilient operations. In other words, it depends on the ability to bring multiple disciplines together in a connected operating model.
That is where distributed capability can create real advantage. When enterprises can assemble teams across locations such as Coimbatore, Madurai, Pune and Hyderabad, they are better positioned to combine the skills needed to modernize legacy estates, operationalize intelligent workflows and sustain value after launch. Instead of treating AI as a pilot program owned by a narrow specialist group, the GCC can become a broader business capability that connects strategy, execution and operations.
Publicis Sapient helps organizations build toward that outcome across every stage of the GCC journey. In the establish phase, the focus is on setting up AI-first, culturally aligned GCCs that operate as seamless extensions of the core business from day one. In the scale phase, the goal is to evolve existing centers into future-ready hubs through capability building, performance management and continuous improvement. In the acquire phase, under-leveraged centers can be reinvented into stronger strategic value engines through modernization, governance and better alignment to enterprise priorities.
Across each stage, regional design plays a practical role. It can support faster access to talent, more resilient delivery structures and a more adaptable path to multidisciplinary growth. It also helps enterprises move beyond the idea that a GCC must be centered on a single location to be coherent. In reality, coherence comes from mission clarity, integrated ways of working and strong governance—not from geographic concentration alone.
The broader opportunity is clear. India remains the launchpad for next-generation GCCs because of its scale, talent base and digital ambition. Publicis Sapient sees this first-hand through its strong presence in India and its experience helping organizations establish, scale and reinvent GCCs as high-performing hubs for product innovation, engineering and business operations. As India’s GCC market continues to grow, the enterprises that create the most value will be those that design their centers for resilience and evolution from the start.
That is why the next chapter of GCC strategy in India is not just about where to hire. It is about how to architect a distributed, AI-first capability model that can modernize systems, accelerate delivery, support governed AI adoption and sustain operational resilience over time. Cities such as Coimbatore, Madurai, Pune and Hyderabad are important in that story not because they are substitutes for a legacy model, but because they help make a better model possible.
For leaders shaping the future of their GCCs, the message is simple: location strategy is operating strategy. When designed deliberately, a distributed footprint can give enterprises broader access to talent, lower concentration risk and a stronger foundation for building the next generation of AI-first GCCs in India.