India’s global capability centres (GCCs) are taking on larger technology, product development and innovation mandates, raising questions about whether multinational companies will increasingly build capabilities in-house at the expense of Indian IT services firms.
Workato believes the relationship is more likely to evolve into a partnership, with GCCs driving innovation and Indian IT companies bringing the scale, industry expertise and implementation capabilities needed to translate it into enterprise transformation.
“I do not think one can really succeed without the other,” Shane Smith, Director and Global Head of Partner Success at Workato, tells AIM, describing the relationship between GCCs and Indian IT companies.
While GCCs are gaining greater autonomy to develop technology and build specialised teams, implementing AI across large organisations requires integration with legacy systems, enterprise-wide governance and the ability to deploy solutions at scale.
For Workato, an AI orchestration and governance platform, this creates an opportunity to bring GCCs, Indian IT services companies and technology providers into a common ecosystem.
GCCs Bring Innovation; Indian IT Brings Scale
Speaking to AIM, David Ng, Global VP, Partner, GTM and Alliances at Workato, mentions the company’s engagement with Indian IT firms is evolving beyond the traditional model in which service providers primarily supplied delivery capacity.
Historically, Workato partnered with Indian IT companies to increase implementation capacity. Today, the company increasingly looks to these partners for innovation and industry-specific expertise.
“Historically we partnered for delivery scale, but increasingly today we are partnering for the innovation our partners drive in this space,” Ng says.
The distinction is important for GCCs. As multinational companies expand their India operations, these centres are increasingly expected to develop products, engineer AI solutions and solve business problems for global operations. However, the ability to develop a solution does not automatically translate into the ability to deploy and maintain it across a large enterprise.
Ng says these partnerships allow companies to decide which capabilities to build internally and which to access through external providers.
“GCCs need scale, and scale comes with a component of risk. You have to decide what you want to build and what you want to buy. When you build, there is an element of risk and an element of maintenance. When you buy that capability, some of that is mitigated,” he states.
Partnerships can also provide access to expertise beyond the immediate organisation, helping GCCs address problems they may not have identified internally.
AI is Changing What Partners Bring to the Table
The growing adoption of enterprise AI is creating a different set of requirements for technology partnerships. Enterprises need to connect AI models and applications with data spread across enterprise resource planning systems, customer relationship management platforms, databases, procurement systems and other business applications.
Workato argues that this requires both technology infrastructure and specialised knowledge of how industries operate.
Ng describes Workato as a horizontal platform that can be adapted to different industries, while its partners bring the vertical expertise needed to address specific business problems.
“Where Workato is a strong horizontal platform, our partners layer strong vertical expertise and subject-matter expertise on top of our platform, helping us solve very unique industry problems,” he states.
Partners such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tech Mahindra, Infosys and HCLTech contribute implementation resources as well as knowledge of industry-specific requirements. In banking, this could involve know-your-customer processes or fraud detection. In retail, it could involve inventory management. In insurance, partners can help identify operational gaps where AI could deliver measurable value.
Ng says these companies bring three broad capabilities, like delivery skills, industry-related subject-matter expertise, and distribution and credibility.
Their role is particularly relevant as enterprises attempt to move AI from isolated applications into core business processes. Without reliable connections to enterprise data and systems, AI investments risk remaining limited to experimentation, knowledge retrieval or peripheral productivity tools.
Workato’s proposition is that connectivity, execution and governance must work together before enterprises can safely allow AI agents to interact with business-critical systems.
Why GCCs May Still Need Indian IT Companies
The growing autonomy of GCCs raises a central question: if multinational companies can recruit specialised talent and build their own AI capabilities in India, why do they need Indian IT services firms?
For Workato, the answer lies in the difference between developing a capability and scaling its deployment.
A GCC may build a solution for a particular business function, but implementing it across multiple systems, business units and geographies can require substantial engineering resources and industry expertise. External partners can help provide that capacity without requiring the enterprise to build every capability internally.
Ng says Workato itself follows a similar model. As a product and platform company, it wants to concentrate its investments on improving its technology rather than managing every customer implementation.
“We do not want to own the end-to-end implementation of our platform for every customer, because we want to continue investing in product innovation. That is where our investment should go, not into hiring more people to deliver the platform for a customer,” he says.
The arrangement also creates a commercial incentive for Indian IT services firms. Partners can earn services revenue from large transformation projects while gaining access to technology that supports their customer engagements. Workato, in turn, gains access to implementation capacity and industry knowledge.
Ng describes the arrangement as a “give-and-take relationship”, adding that partners play a significant role in helping Workato operate efficiently as a product organisation.
This suggests that the growth of GCCs does not necessarily eliminate the need for external technology providers. Instead, it could change the nature of the relationship, with in-house teams focusing on product ownership and innovation while partners contribute implementation scale, specialised capabilities and transformation expertise.
India is Becoming the Centre of Enterprise AI Innovation
Workato’s decision to deepen its presence in India is tied to where enterprises are building their AI capabilities.
Ng says conversations with customers globally increasingly point towards India when discussing where solutions are being developed.
“Every time they talk about the problem they are trying to solve and where that solution is being built, it points back to India. That is why we want to be as close as possible to where innovation is being built, and why we are hiring in India and walking the hallways where this innovation is happening,” he states.
The company is looking for a combination of domain expertise and AI solutioning capabilities, particularly among AI architects who must integrate workflows into industry-specific processes and legacy systems.
“An intersection of functional and technical skills works best in such scenarios,” Ng says.
For GCCs, this intersection is increasingly important as they take on responsibilities that extend beyond conventional technology support. Building AI solutions requires an understanding of both the technology and the business process being redesigned.
Indian IT companies can complement these capabilities by bringing experience across industries, implementation resources and relationships with enterprise decision-makers.
Indian IT Firms Must Adapt to the Next Phase of Transformation
Smith states that the Indian IT services companies have repeatedly adapted to changes in technology and customer expectations, and he does not view the rise of GCCs as an event that will make their skills redundant.
“These organisations have always adapted to the current and have always been trusted by their customers to help them navigate the future. That is how I look at it,” he says.
He adds that Indian IT firms would continue to help customers navigate the next phase of enterprise technology transformation.
The opportunity, however, depends on how effectively these firms adapt to the changing requirements of enterprise AI. Traditional delivery capacity alone may not be sufficient when customers want industry-specific AI solutions, integration with business-critical systems and measurable returns from their investments.
The company’s view is that GCCs and Indian IT services firms are not necessarily competing for the same role. As GCCs take on more innovation-led work, Indian IT companies can move towards becoming strategic transformation partners, bringing the expertise and scale required to implement that innovation across enterprises.