How Kyndryl Is Powering India’s GCCs Into Strategic Growth Engines

In this exclusive conversation with CiOL, Manjula Ramaswamy, VP and GCC Head for Kyndryl India, shares how the tectonic plates beneath India’s tech ecosystem are shifting. Global Capability Centers (GCCs), once viewed through a lens of competition, are now emerging as strategic collaborators—reshaping the very foundation of how digital transformation is delivered.

With significant amount of digital initiatives being powered through GCCs, the narrative is no longer about cost or scale alone. It’s about co-creation, speed, and strategic depth. As GCCs evolve into nerve centres of innovation, they’re turning to IT service providers like Kyndryl to bring in advanced capabilities—be it in IT infrastructure, cloud, or digital workplace transformation.

“These partnerships are not transactional—they’re transformational,” says Manjula. By combining global scale with local agility, Kyndryl enables GCCs to stay focused on the future—while seamlessly managing the complexity of today.

This synergy is not just driving operational efficiency; it’s unlocking new pathways for growth, innovation, and competitive advantage—marking a bold new chapter in India’s digital leadership story. Excerpts.

What’s prompting IT companies to view GCCs as strategic partners in digital transformation, and how are both sides navigating overlapping capabilities to build genuine, win-win partnerships instead of competing?

India’s GCCs are no longer just offshore support arms—they’ve become the nerve centers of digital transformation for global enterprises, leading advances in AI, cloud, analytics, and more. But as the demand for speed and scale grows, so does the need for deeper expertise. That’s where IT services firms step in. With the ability to scale quickly, deploy cross-functional talent, and deliver complex tech at pace, they’re becoming trusted partners rather than competitors in the GCC growth story. Start-ups and IT firms associated with GCCs gain the ability to scale their operations and solutions globally, leveraging the networks and resources of MNCs.

This shift is giving rise to collaborative models of joint talent development, managed services for operational tasks, and co-creation of solutions in advanced technologies. Together, GCCs and IT firms deliver faster innovation, solve talent shortages, and enable efficient transformation for global clients.

In a tightening global economy, can partnerships with GCCs effectively offset revenue pressures in traditional IT markets?

According to NASSCOM, India is home to over 1,700 operational Global Capability Centers as of 2025. EY reports a projected market size of $110 billion from approximately 2,400 GCCs by 2030. These centers employ close to 2 million professionals and are driving innovation across key sectors like technology, BFSI, pharma, and manufacturing. This highlights India’s growing importance as a strategic hub for MNCs looking to relocate critical R&D and technology functions for cost efficiency and faster time-to-market. Recent years have seen a consistent CAGR of almost 10% in IT/BPM sector revenue attributed to GCCs, with a robust projection of reaching $143 billion in direct output by 2030, as noted by a report from Dun & Bradstreet.

For Indian IT services companies, GCCs now represent a significant and growing revenue stream, proving to be a crucial symbiotic relationship. According to Everest Group estimates, IT and business process service providers generate around $20 billion in revenue from GCCs globally, with Indian GCCs contributing the majority share. Amid slowing tech demand and disruption from GenAI and automation, IT firms are increasingly partnering with GCCs to support setup, provide staff augmentation, and drive digital transformation. This collaboration is helping Indian IT firms not just stay resilient but also increase the share of domestic business in their overall revenue mix.

Could you provide real-world examples of how partnerships between GCCs and IT service providers—such as Kyndryl—have successfully tackled complex challenges, particularly involving AI, cloud, or data analytics?

Partnerships between GCCs and IT service providers have been instrumental in solving complex enterprise challenges, especially in the realms of AI, cloud, and data analytics. Today, GCCs across IT, BPO, engineering, and product development are moving up the value chain by delivering complex, business-critical work. They've established strongholds in BFSI, software, telecom, and semiconductors, with rising focus in aerospace, automotive, energy, and healthcare sectors. One sector that has seen tremendous growth is real estate services. The proliferation of GCCs has not only spurred growth in real estate services but also significantly boosted services exports, contributed to economic expansion, generated employment opportunities, and facilitated rapid revenue escalation for these firms.

Kyndryl is collaborating with a leading OEM partner to act as a catalyst in the growth of GCCs. Drawing on its decades of deep expertise, Kyndryl enables seamless integration of advanced solutions that align with GCCs’ evolving business goals. This partnership fosters co-innovation, empowering GCCs to accelerate digital transformation with greater agility and impact.

How is India’s role evolving—from primarily operational support to strategic decision-making—in global IT transformation agendas?

This shift is palpable and is indeed driven by the growth of GCCs that leverage India's vast talent pool and technological advancements to spearhead innovation and digital transformation. According to a BCG report, artificial intelligence—especially advanced use cases such as generative AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and AI agents—is emerging as a key driver of GCC maturity. While leading organizations have successfully moved beyond pilots and are embedding AI into core business workflows, the majority of GCCs remain stuck in early-stage experimentation.

Among global locations, India, Mexico, and the U.S. lead in GCC maturity. India stands out not only for its scale but also for consistency in performance—nearly 30% of its GCCs are classified as mature, while only 6% fall into the underperforming category. This reflects India’s rare balance of size and sophistication in the global GCC ecosystem, adds the report.

New GCCs are being designed to build cutting-edge capabilities—beyond cost and scale—to support parent companies in global market expansion, local partnerships, and innovation. Technologies like AI, big data, cloud, and mobility are further accelerating this shift, enabling Indian teams to co-lead critical digital agendas and deliver differentiated value at the enterprise level.

Besides cost-efficiency, what metrics do you consider most valuable when assessing the success of GCC–IT service provider partnerships?

Beyond cost-efficiency, partnerships between GCCs and IT service providers should be evaluated on metrics that capture strategic value, innovation, and talent development. Key areas include business impact (such as revenue growth and market expansion), digital maturity (measured through technology adoption and automation levels), and talent readiness (including upskilling, reskilling, and future-oriented capabilities). These metrics provide a more holistic view of how such collaborations drive long-term value and competitive advantage for the parent organization—far beyond just cost savings.

Kyndryl drives AI-led transformation by embedding advanced AI capabilities across its cloud services, IT modernization, cybersecurity, and data management solutions. Kyndryl Bridge, an AI-powered open integration platform, provides enterprises with real-time operational insights by leveraging AI-driven automation and predictive analytics. We recently announced an enterprise-grade Agentic AI framework that orchestrates and dispatches a portfolio of specialized, self-directed, self-learning AI agents that dynamically respond to shifting conditions and keep humans in the loop for oversight.

We leverage our strategic hyperscaler partnerships to help GCC customers accelerate their AI adoption. Our collaboration with Microsoft helps enterprises modernize their IT landscapes through Microsoft’s RISE with SAP migration program. Our work with NVIDIA supports organizations in scaling AI adoption by integrating NVIDIA’s advanced AI technologies with Kyndryl’s expertise in managed services, driving innovation in automation and analytics. Kyndryl strengthened its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) through a multi-year agreement to co-develop generative AI and machine learning solutions via the Kyndryl and AWS Innovation Factory—driving digital transformation and operational efficiency.