10th May 2025, Kathmandu
The 15th edition of the Nasscom GCC Summit & Awards 2025 offered a transformative blueprint for India’s Global Capability Centers (GCCs), emphasizing innovation, talent, AI, and inclusive expansion.
India’s GCC Revolution Nasscom
India’s position as a global leader in the GCC (Global Capability Center) ecosystem was reinforced at the Nasscom GCC Summit & Awards 2025, where top policymakers, industry leaders, and tech innovators converged to shape the future of enterprise capability. With over a dozen impactful sessions and a buzzing Tech Cafe Showcase featuring 40 startups, the summit zoomed out to examine the larger forces redefining India’s GCC landscape.
National Frameworks to Fuel GCC Expansion
A pivotal fireside chat featured Rajesh Nambiar, President of Nasscom, and S. Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY, discussing the upcoming National Framework for GCCs. Positioned as an enabler, not a policy, this framework aims to foster inclusive GCC expansion into Tier 2, 3, and even Tier 4 cities. The conversation emphasized public-private trust and regional opportunity, ensuring India’s growth is both broad-based and future-ready.
Trendspotting the Future: Tech, AI, and Enterprise Reinvention
In a keynote rich with data and insight, Stanton Jones of ISG identified five tech imperatives for the next wave of enterprise transformation:
Funding Generative AI
Fixing data readiness
Cost optimization strategies
AI-first productivity models
Navigating capital delays and talent crunches
GCCs must prepare for dual futures: one challenged by constraints, the other ripe with opportunity, but both demanding AI fluency and contextual data.
Education vs. Employability: Is India Ready?
Prof. Rudra Pratap, Vice Chancellor of Plaksha University, questioned if India’s education system aligns with its tech ambitions. Advocating for interdisciplinary, industry-integrated, and innovation-driven models, he urged GCCs to invest in:
AI-based upskilling
GCC-led fellowships
Industry-funded Centers of Excellence
His core message: A Viksit Bharat needs a Viksit talent strategy.
Cloud Transformation: Balancing Agility with Resilience
In a session led by Sumeet Mathur (ServiceNow India), Merck Group and TransUnion experts tackled the cloud conundrum. The panel highlighted that cloud is no longer a tech upgrade—it’s a strategic operating model.
Key takeaways included:
Agility tax vs. architectural discipline
Chaos engineering for resilience
AI-powered cloud operations
Cloud and AI will evolve into a unified digital core, demanding new operational models.
Cybersecurity in an AI-First World
With AI bringing both opportunity and risk, a session led by Punit Sood, Justin Edwards, and Prinkan Pal emphasized that cybersecurity must shift from function to enterprise-wide capability.
GCCs were urged to embed:
Proactive AI-integrated security frameworks
Continuous upskilling
Enterprise-wide threat modeling
Cyber-resilience, they concluded, will be the new benchmark for secure businesses.
AI-First CX: The Next Frontier of Customer Experience
Leaders from BCG, Roche, and Lloyds Technology Centre shared how AI-first CX is revolutionizing the front office—ushering in hyper-personalization, predictive responses, and automated service loops. However, cultural transformation is key.
GCCs must now ask: Can AI elevate experiences rather than just automate them?
Redefining Success for GCCs: Influence, Innovation, Impact
In a deep dive on long-term strategy, Sangeeta Gupta, Ashish K Srivastava, and Neeraj Goyal discussed evolving GCC success metrics. While cost and productivity remain central, innovation and enterprise influence are emerging as critical KPIs.
Themes included:
Responsible growth
AI-led enablement
Talent transformation
The new rule: GCCs must lead on value creation, not just execution.
Investing in India’s AI Economy
In a high-impact fireside chat, Ruchika Panesar (NatWest Group) and Rajan Anandan (Peak XV Partners) discussed how India’s AI ecosystem collides with venture capital and entrepreneurial depth to unlock enterprise innovation.
Key focus areas included:
Healthcare and deeptech startups
Founder-market fit
Startup–GCC collaboration
India’s AI economy thrives on creativity, resilience, and data-led insights.
AI & Drug Discovery: Innovation Meets Affordability
In a visionary session, Dr. Reddy’s Labs MD Prasad G V and Rajesh Nambiar unpacked how AI is revolutionizing drug discovery—from modelling molecules to compressing R&D timelines.
AI is now driving:
Faster, more accurate trials
Lower R&D costs
Scalable affordability
This convergence of tech and healthcare underscores India’s role in democratizing innovation.
Tech Cafe Showcase: India’s Startup Engine in Action
The Tech Cafe was the innovation heartbeat of the summit, spotlighting 40 cutting-edge startups redefining automation, AI, cybersecurity, and cloud. These agile innovators displayed real-world solutions, affirming that India’s startup ecosystem is a critical driver of GCC transformation.
Final Keynote: Grit, Growth, and the Entrepreneurial Mindset
Dr. A. Velumani, founder of Thyrocare, closed the summit with a personal story of resilience, innovation, and grassroots growth. His message: real innovation stems not from access, but ambition and experimentation.
“Change isn’t commanded, it’s created,” he said, urging GCCs to embrace failure, experimentation, and bold thinking.
Conclusion: India is Designing the Future of Global Capability
The Nasscom GCC Summit 2025 boldly showcased India’s readiness to lead the next decade of global capability. Through strategic frameworks, AI-first transformation, and a focus on education and innovation, India’s GCC ecosystem is scaling with purpose.
From Tier 1 metros to emerging Tier 3 towns, from cloud complexity to AI-powered customer experience, this summit offered clarity, ambition, and direction. The message is clear:
India isn’t just participating in the future of GCCs—it’s leading it.
For more: India’s GCC Revolution Nasscom