India’s GCC ecosystem is set for a major transformation as global companies leverage artificial intelligence (AI), automation and tech-enabled productivity to reimagine the way they view their workforces. Although global responsibilities to India’s GCCs have continued to grow and become more sophisticated, a number of more routine operational roles have come under pressure as companies lean towards smaller, specialised teams.
According to industry estimates, 25,000-30,000 jobs may be lost globally in the GCC sector in India this year, although that number is highly divergent among people. Pareekh Jain of EIIRTrend has estimated the number at 25,000-30,000 jobs, while 3AI CEO Sameer Dhanrajani is estimating around 4,000-5,000 jobs lost.
India’s GCC Sector Enters a New Phase
From the Global Center of Excellence to India has become a significant GCC centre, with over 2,100 centres and an estimated 2.4-2.5 million-plus staff. For a long time, the GCC industry grew hand in hand with large-scale hiring and cheap delivery. With AI, this is about to change.
However, in the future, businesses are re-evaluating the impact of technology on staffing with a lot more weighing the value of upskilling the current team to absorb the increased output versus simply increasing staff numbers. This is one reason businesses are scaling back staffing.
Examples of recently announced cuts in the sector include 1,500 at Visa, 600 at PayPal, and cuts at Service Now and at smaller GCCs.
AI is Out, but It’s not the end of jobs
The increasing tendency of doing work in the Gulf Cooperation Council sector is one of the leading trends, with some experts expecting 55% of business ledgers, according to available industry reports.
Please do not take any of this to mean the percentage of jobs being lost as a result of AI. Instead, some jobs will have certain tasks replaced by AI, freeing up human time for more productive work.
Approximately 17.7% of work in the GCC is considered commodity work and around 38.1% of work is viewed as complex work. This gap is essential for business leaders as they figure out which services can be automated and which will require human intervention.
GCCs Are Taking on More Strategic Responsibilities
But for the broader GCC story, even layoffs at some functions are not what they seem. Indian centres are taking over the more vital technology and business functions.
Other areas of increased focus includeAI, software engineering, product development, enterprise platform and technology innovation. Indian GCC teams are increasingly being involved in enterprise level decisions.
This would indicate that the GCC growth is slowly changing from a headcount-led model to capability-led model. Business demand for the centre, in terms of value it is likely to be able to generate, rather than just headcount is leading to this.
Sukanya Roy, partner at Zinnov, told Moneycontrol the increased decision-making authority given to Indian GCCs is indicative of the more strategic role Indian centres are playing.
New Hiring Trends Emerge
This AI-powered transformation is also leading to a shift in the types of skills companies are seeking. The demand is now around: artificial intelligence, data engineering, cloud technology, security and product management.
GCCs are also gearing towards reskilling their current employees with skills in AI-enabled productivity, data-led decision making, process automation and digital product thinking, according to a Business Standard report. According to other projections, as much as 60% of GCC’s workforce may need reskilling by 2030.
Conversely, industry sources cited by the Economic Times say that GCCs are expected to generate almost 150,000 jobs over the coming year – even as some traditional roles are phased out. This points to shifting job composition instead of a shutdown of the GCC industry.
GCC Shift and India’s Workforce What will it mean?
Current GCC trends indicate that the Jobs are changing as well as Artificial Intelligence is being adopted The pressure for greater automation is likely to be placed on routine and repetitive roles. Those with specialised technical and analytical skills, as well as core business skills are likely to be in demand.
Companies are already trying to build leaner teams capable of doing more. As for the employees, that might mean ongoing upskilling will become more relevant than ever as future roles will be structured around the processes enabled by the technology.
The GCC sector in India is thus seemingly moving into a new stage where growing volumes of work would be handled by fewer employees, and complex work aided by automation and artificial intelligence. Although the headline job-cuts estimates still stand challenged, the change in new hiring, workforce planning and skills are inevitable.
