Why India’s GCCs must rethink talent strategy now to lead in 2025
India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) have never been more powerful or pressured. Once seen as offshore cost centres, they now sit at the heart of global innovation strategies, contributing directly to product development, AI transformation, and digital-first growth. But amid this meteoric rise, a new question is taking centre stage: Do we have the talent to sustain it?
In a riveting keynote at the People Matters GCC Talent Summit 2025, Pushkaraj Bidwai, CEO of People Matters, took the audience on a data-rich, future-forward journey through the evolution of India’s GCCs and laid out a bold vision for where they must go next.
“We’re not preparing for the future. The future is already here,” he opened. “What we choose to do in 2025 will define whether GCCs scale as innovation engines—or stagnate as oversized service centres.”
The talent supply-demand gap: A crisis in making
Drawing on insights from People Matters’ GCC India Talentscope 2025 Research involving over 100 GCCs, Bidwai revealed a striking statistic: 9 out of 10 GCC leaders believe talent supply will fall short of demand by 2030. And while the GCC ecosystem is expected to cross 2,400 centres by the end of the decade, the talent required to power that growth remains fragmented and, in many places, dangerously underdeveloped.
“The pipeline exists—but it’s leaking everywhere,” Bidwai warned. “The roles we’re hiring for are not the roles that will matter in 2028. Our planning is behind, and we have to change that now.”
“AI won’t disrupt hiring. It is hiring now.”
The session spotlighted one of the most game-changing shifts in today’s talent strategy: the rise of AI-powered hiring systems. Today, 47% of talent leaders are already deploying AI tools for sourcing, assessment, and scheduling. But what’s coming next is bigger. Bidwai described the future of ‘agentic hiring’—AI systems that autonomously manage the full recruitment and onboarding journey, from resume screening to performance monitoring in the first 90 days.
“Imagine a recruiting agent that doesn’t just source resumes—it schedules interviews, builds onboarding paths, sends feedback surveys, and checks in on performance,” he explained. “That’s not five years away. That’s the second half of this year.”
He cautioned leaders that if AI isn't embedded into their hiring workflows by the end of 2025, they risk losing ground, not just to competitors, but to their own future capability needs.
Because once the right talent enters the system, the next frontier is equally critical—how fast and effectively you can build their capabilities to meet evolving business needs.
Lessons from Walmart: Skilling isn’t just about learning—it’s about speed
To illustrate what good looks like, Bidwai pointed to Walmart’s skilling transformation, where AI-driven learning systems reduced training time by 37% across a workforce of 2.3 million. Through adaptive learning, simulations, and real-time feedback, Walmart turned learning into a competitive advantage.
“Walmart didn’t go after 1% improvements,” Bidwai said. “They went after 10X outcomes—and achieved them. If a 60-year-old retail giant can do that, what’s stopping our GCCs?”
He challenged leaders to shift their approach from training more to training smarter, and to build personalised, tech-enabled skilling platforms that link directly to business outcomes.
What skills are GCCs really chasing?
Among the most sought-after capabilities today is AI and machine learning, with 59% of GCCs ranking it as a top priority. Interestingly, the demand is being driven more by financial services firms than tech companies, reflecting how AI adoption is expanding beyond traditional digital sectors.
This cross-industry talent pull, Bidwai explained, means competition won’t just come from peers—it will come from everywhere. And that makes workforce planning more critical than ever.
“Your next competitor for AI talent might not be a software firm—it might be a bank,” he said. “That changes how we plan talent pools and hiring models.”
Recognition, retention & career design: The new employee contract
Talent acquisition is just one part of the puzzle. The other, Bidwai argued, lies in how we engage, recognise, and grow the people we already have.
“Behavioural recognition is outdated. What GCCs need now is impact-based recognition—systems that reward outcomes, not just effort,” he said.
He shared research that found many organisations still don’t have structured job roles or measurable KPIs mapped across teams, which severely limits their ability to recognise contribution or build career paths. The future, he said, will belong to organisations that offer hyper-personalised career journeys, reward meaningful impact, and align learning with long-term growth.
SpaceX vs NASA: The 10X mindset
Perhaps the most memorable moment of the session came when Bidwai drew a compelling comparison between NASA’s bureaucratic model and SpaceX’s agile engineering culture.
While NASA built massive structures, hired thousands, and took decades to launch new technologies, SpaceX reduced launch costs by 20X by assembling small teams of 10X engineers who could design, build, test, and iterate faster than traditional aerospace systems could approve a change order.
“SpaceX didn’t win by hiring more people. They won by hiring better people—fewer, faster, bolder,” Bidwai said. “That’s what we need in GCCs. Not headcount, but talent density.”
He urged leaders to move beyond workforce scale and focus instead on capability density, agility, and problem-solving speed.
Strategic imperatives for 2025: Scale, rethink, operationalise
Bidwai concluded his keynote with a clear roadmap for GCC leaders: First, scale digital infrastructure. HR and business systems must evolve into AI-ready, analytics-powered platforms that enable real-time decision-making. Second, rethink learning networks. The most important answers won’t come from internal playbooks—they will come from external ecosystems and cross-industry collaboration. Third, operationalise analytics across the talent lifecycle, moving from passive dashboards to active intelligence that drives hiring, skilling, retention, and cultural transformation.
The bottom line: GCCs that build talent density now will define 2025
As the session wrapped, Bidwai left the audience with a stark but inspiring message.
“This isn’t about preparing for 2030. This is about acting in 2025,” he said. “The speed of change will not slow down. And the organisations that lead this shift—who think bold, hire smart, and move fast—will define India’s next phase of global leadership.”
India’s GCCs are no longer defined by what they cost. They are now defined by what they create—and the courage of their leaders to build teams, cultures, and capabilities that are built for the now.