India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are increasing their focus on artificial intelligence, but foundational gaps are slowing the shift from experimentation to wider enterprise use, according to a joint report by Dell Technologies and Zinnov.
The report, titled ‘India GCCs 2030: From Capability Centers to Agentic Transformation Engines’, said nearly 70% of GCCs remain at the AI pilot stage because of challenges involving data, infrastructure and governance. At the same time, around 55% of routine GCC work is exposed to AI-led automation, making reskilling nearly 60% of the workforce necessary by 2030.
The findings are based on surveys and discussions with more than 50 senior GCC leaders across BFSI, retail, manufacturing and software. India currently has more than 2,100 GCCs employing 2.36 million professionals and generating USD 98.4 billion in FY26 revenue.
Indian GCCs account for around 28% of global GCC AI talent, while more than 1,200 centres have established dedicated AI/ML capabilities. About 70% have a defined AI roadmap or charter, and 66% of leaders now consider top-line business impact a key priority for enterprise AI adoption.
However, moving AI projects into sustained production remains a major challenge.
“…scale and ambition alone are not enough. Nearly 70% of GCCs remain stuck at the pilot stage, unable to consistently move promising proofs of concept into sustained enterprise adoption. The constraint is foundational: fragmented data, legacy systems, unclear governance, immature security controls and talent models built for a pre-AI world. “AI pilots stall for structural reasons: production data is messier than controlled environments, governance is addressed after the fact rather than built in, and use cases developed outside common enterprise platforms are difficult to integrate at scale,” the report stated.
The report also highlighted the higher computing demands of agentic AI. Such workflows can use 10,000 to 5,00,000 tokens, compared with 1,000 to 2,000 tokens for a standard chat interaction, making early infrastructure and cost planning important.
“The most influential GCCs of 2030 will not be measured by the number of AI initiatives they launch, but by their ability to industrialise AI responsibly and at scale… robust foundations across data, infrastructure, and governance will become the bedrock of enterprise innovation,” said Manish Gupta, President and Managing Director, Dell Technologies India.
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