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By 2030, 75% of GCCs May Be Gone — Will Yours Be One of Them?
AI, Agility, and the New Rules for Surviving as a GCC
Arun Mehra
June 06, 2025
Hi everyone,
There was a time when simply setting up a back-office in India felt like a win. Lower costs, offshore support, extended hours — job done.
But the model’s cracking.
What started as a clever way to save money has now become bloated, slow, and often misaligned with the core business. Too many Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are stuck playing yesterday’s game in today’s market.
And the data shows it.
By 2030, it’s estimated that up to 75% of today’s GCCs may not survive.
Not because they weren’t useful, but because they weren’t built to evolve.
Cost Arbitrage Alone Won’t Save You
The original promise was simple: move operations to a cheaper region, slash costs, maintain control.
But that arbitrage is shrinking. Talent is pricier, attrition is higher, and clients now demand faster, smarter, and more strategic outcomes, not just cheaper ones.
Firms still measuring success in headcount and salary savings are missing the real picture. It’s not about how many you can hire cheaply. It’s about how intelligently you deploy talent.
The firms that survive are those who leverage their offshore teams for value creation, not just expense reduction.
From Back-Office to Trust-Centre
Once treated as an operational appendage, today’s offshore centre must become a core strategic unit.
In fact, over 60% of finance leaders believe their offshore teams are underleveraged, mainly due to lack of autonomy and siloed decision-making.
If you want your offshore setup to deliver real ROI, you need to stop thinking of it as a satellite and start treating it like a strategic asset.
That means moving away from handing out fragmented tasks and moving towards building full-service capabilities that involve delivery, insights, and innovation.
We’re seeing a shift — the smartest firms are transforming their offshore teams into innovation hubs. Where R&D, advisory, data, and client delivery get handled end-to-end.
AI-Readiness, Agility and Structure are the Future
Only 23% of offshore centres have adopted AI/automation at scale, despite rising demand for data-driven and real-time delivery models.
The firms that make it through this decade will be purpose-built.
They’ll have agile teams. Integrated systems. A clear global strategy. Not a patchwork of departments flung across time zones.
AI and automation will also widen the gap — not every firm will keep up. Those who do will free up capacity, streamline delivery, and build smarter client experiences.
But all of this comes down to one thing: intentional structure. You can’t stumble into efficiency. You have to design for it.
How We’re Helping Firms Build to Last
At Samera, we don’t just help set up offshore teams — we help build global firms. Firms designed to scale, innovate, and evolve with the market.
We bring leadership coaching, process design, and deep industry experience to the table because a team in India is just a cost unless you know how to turn it into a competitive advantage.
The future belongs to firms who treat offshoring as a strategic capability, not a cost hack.
👉 Ready to rethink your GCC? Book a call and let’s build something that lasts.
Cheers,
Arun
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