A clear shift is underway in how a global retailer is using its India operations, moving from scale driven support to full business responsibility across critical functions.
Tesco Business Solutions in India now plays a central role in engineering, finance, people operations, data science, analytics and artificial intelligence. The India centre is accountable for some of the company’s most sensitive and business critical work, reflecting a broader rethink of how global capability centres fit into enterprise strategy.
Dr. Sumit Mitra, who leads Tesco Business Solutions and Tesco India, explained this transition during a recent industry interaction. He described the move as a shift from labour arbitrage to intellectual arbitrage, where India teams own outcomes rather than execute tasks.
The scale of responsibility is significant. Teams in India manage end to end recruitment for around 130,000 hires every year across India, the UK and Budapest. Payroll for more than 400,000 employees is also handled from the centre, along with pensions, supplier lifecycle management and customer and colleague contact services. “We could be in the front page of every newspaper if we don’t get that right,” Mitra said.
He stressed the importance of connecting data across functions. “In a GCC, when you are sitting on so much data and finance, customer, your products, your people, and then if you don’t connect the data, then it’s a crime,” he said. “Because then you’re looking at things in silo.”
Engineering has become the backbone of this transformation. Around 90% of the workforce in the India centre consists of engineers working on data platforms, analytics, AI and in house product development. The team has built proprietary tools for route optimisation, cost intelligence and real time quality monitoring. “Data is only good if you do something with it,” Mitra said. “You can create as much insights as you want. But you don’t take a decision. Then the data is useless.”
Business immersion is also a priority. India teams regularly spend time in UK stores and distribution centres to understand real world operations. “You can’t sit in India and not understand what’s happening in the UK geography, UK market,” Mitra said. “Otherwise, how do you deliver? How do you execute?”
Mitra warned that focusing only on scale is risky. “The danger that I see is we become a hamster on a wheel,” he said. “The future is not about headcount. It’s about skill count.” Tesco’s India GCC is now measured by enterprise impact, decision making and accountability.
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