India-based IT services centres of global firms have transformed to become the key driver of innovation from the level of providing BPO services, development of basic application and more recently delivering value.
MNCs are now leveraging their captive IT centres in India to design products and services for the emerging markets as also to enable digital transformation of their global enterprises, indicating a fundamental shift in the captive business model. Engineering research and development (ER&D) activities have emerged as the fast growing segment in the IT services landscape of GIC (global in-house centres aka captive BPOs) though it accounts only a fifth of total IT-BPM (business process management) exports from India.
“These centres are now integrated with global operations of MNCs, and have become a part of decision making processes at their headquarters,” said President of Nasscom, R Chandrasekhar, at the Nasscom GIC 2015 Conclave here.
GICs are now working on emerging technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things), robotics, wearable devices and 3D printing, among others.
India operations of over 300 companies are focusing on ER&D and product development services. The share of ER&D/ SPD (software product development) is estimated at 59 per cent in the overall GIC services market.
Apart from availability of the huge talent pool, the new wave of entrepreneurship and start-up culture in the country is also attracting global firms to drive innovation from India, said Shakti Sagar, Chairman of Nasscom GIC Council. Last five years saw significant rise in the number of GICs in India — from about 750 centres in 2010 to over 1,000 in 2015.
The latest trend is to build and run centres of excellence (COEs), and establish big data labs to provide analytics. There are over 100 COEs by global firms across verticals.
