India's Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are on course to evolve into full-scale agentic transformation engines by 2030, according to a joint report released on Wednesday, 23 September 2026 by Dell Technologies and research firm Zinnov. The report warns that the GCCs positioned to lead this shift will be those that built scalable AI foundations tied to measurable enterprise outcomes — not merely those running the highest number of AI pilots.

Scale of India's GCC Ecosystem

India currently hosts over 2,100 GCCs, employing 2.36 million people and generating $98.4 billion in revenue in FY26. Indian GCCs now account for approximately 28 per cent of global GCC AI talent, with over 1,200 centres having built dedicated artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. Notably, 70 per cent of GCC leaders already have a defined AI roadmap or charter in place, signalling that strategic intent has moved well ahead of the pilot stage.

From Capability Centres to Ownership Models

The report highlights a structural shift in the role GCCs play within global enterprises. Nearly 64 per cent of GCC leaders now hold dual global mandates — running the India centre while simultaneously owning a global function. Sidhant Rastogi, President of Zinnov, described this as a decade-defining transition: 'For the last two decades, the conversation was largely about scale, talent, and capability. The next decade will be about ownership. As AI and agentic systems become embedded into enterprise workflows, GCCs will increasingly be expected to own products, platforms, markets, and measurable business outcomes.' Rastogi added that centres building the right data, technology, governance, and talent foundations now will move from being capability hubs to becoming true transformation engines for the enterprise.

Infrastructure Demands of Agentic AI

The report flags a critical but underappreciated infrastructure challenge: agentic workflows can consume between 10,000 and 5 lakh tokens per workflow, compared with just 1,000 to 2,000 tokens for a standard chat interaction. According to the report, 'GCC leaders who do not make workload-level infrastructure decisions early often find themselves managing a budget problem rather than a business outcome.' Manish Gupta, President and Managing Director of Dell Technologies India, stressed that robust foundations across data, infrastructure, and governance would become 'the bedrock of enterprise innovation.'

Workforce Reinvention on the Horizon

The talent dimension is equally consequential. The report estimates that 55 per cent of routine GCC work is already exposed to AI-driven automation, while 60 per cent of the GCC workforce will require reskilling by 2030. The authors argue that the response cannot be incremental AI training — it demands a fundamental reinvention of work itself. Reinforcing the business-first orientation, 66 per cent of GCC leaders already rank top-line business impact as a high priority for their enterprise AI strategy, indicating that the internal conversation has moved well beyond cost reduction and delivery metrics.

What Comes Next

As agentic AI systems become increasingly embedded in enterprise workflows, the pressure on GCC leaders to demonstrate quantifiable business outcomes — rather than capability breadth — will intensify. Industry observers note that India's deep AI talent pool and established GCC infrastructure give it a structural advantage, but execution on data governance and infrastructure investment will ultimately determine which centres lead and which lag by the decade's end.