Introducing ChatGCC: Real-World Insights Shaping the Future of Global Capability Centers

Episode 1

Hosted by Patricia Connolly and Aditya Jayaraman 

Backed by SMC Squared and Hexaware Technologies 

Listen to the Full Episode Here

Read the Full Transcript Below

Key Takeaways

• India now hosts roughly 1,800 Global Capability Centers employing over 1.9 million professionals — with an estimated three new GCCs announced every week, driven largely by U.S. and European enterprises.

• GCCs have moved through three phases: GCC 1.0 (cost arbitrage), GCC 1.5 (leveraging talent for value), and now GCC 2.0 (AI-infused, outcome-driven organizations).

• AI adoption is now table stakes: ~83% of GCCs are scaling generative AI, ~58% are actively investing in agentic AI, and ~71% have launched reskilling initiatives to close the AI-readiness gap.

• Best-in-class GCCs share three traits: they operate as innovation hubs (not low-cost outposts), they're building toward an autonomous "GCC of 2030," and they treat the shift as a journey — data, then enterprise intelligence, then agents.

• Talent and culture — not just cost — now decide success. The leaders winning with GCCs are rethinking their talent mix for an agentic enterprise.

A New Conversation for GCC Leaders

ChatGCC is a podcast for the executives building, scaling, and rethinking Global Capability Centers — candid, operator-level conversations for CIOs, technology leaders, and GCC operators across the U.S. and India. There's no shortage of generic commentary on GCCs; what's missing is the unfiltered version from people who have actually done it.

That's the gap hosts Patricia Connolly and Aditya Jayaraman set out to fill. As Jayaraman frames the series, the aim is "to talk about subjects that leaders need — the realities of building GCCs, especially how and why they succeed, and very importantly, why they fail or stall." This first episode introduces the hosts and tackles the question on every CIO's mind: where the GCC market stands today, and where it's heading.

Patricia Connolly leads SMC Squared — now part of Hexaware — globally. Her path runs from KPMG through 25 years at Target, where she helped stand up Target India, and a decade building SMC Squared into 35+ GCCs that provide more than 5,000 team members to companies like Ecolab, Callaway Topgolf, Deloitte, Seagate, and Agility Health.

Aditya Jayaraman leads Hexaware in the India market. A self-described "Bay Area tech guy" with two decades across telecoms, data-analytics and Gen AI startups, and a stint leading the high-tech vertical at AWS, his focus is bringing cloud and startup thinking into the GCC ecosystem.

The State of the GCC Market

The growth has been staggering. India alone, Connolly notes, "hosts about 1,800 GCCs employing over 1.9 million professionals," with roughly three new centers announced every week — momentum driven largely by U.S. and European enterprises, with Asia-Pacific and Australia now following. For CIOs, the signal is clear: this is no longer an emerging trend to monitor but a mature, fast-scaling market.

AI is the engine behind much of that acceleration. Around 83% of GCCs are scaling generative AI, roughly 58% are actively investing in agentic AI, and about 71% have launched reskilling initiatives to close the readiness gap. The scale is already enterprise-defining — JPMorgan Chase alone runs AI-driven compliance, risk, and analytics workloads with over 55,000 employees in India.

"We've grown from thinking just about cost containment to leveraging the best talent and what they can do to provide value." — Patricia Connolly

From Cost to Capability

That shift in value is the throughline of the entire series. Conversations that were once dominated by labor savings now center on outcomes. Connolly shares about how much has changed: a few years ago, she says, "cost arbitrage was king — the only card in most cases." Today, the maturing of talent and confidence in GCCs has rewritten the agenda.

She maps the arc in three stages: GCC 1.0, built on cost arbitrage; GCC 1.5, leveraging talent to create genuine business value; and GCC 2.0, the AI-infused, outcome-driven organizations emerging now. The center of gravity has moved decisively from labor arbitrage to innovation.

What Best-In-Class Looks Like

After six months meeting GCC customers across India, Jayaraman sees the leaders converging on three things. First, they've stopped treating the India GCC as a cost play — it has become, in his words, "the hub of innovation for the entire enterprise, the mothership and the parent." Second, they're preparing for what he calls the GCC of 2030: anticipating that many workflows will become autonomous and agent-run, and rethinking the talent mix an agentic enterprise will require. Third, they treat the transformation as a journey rather than a switch to flip — stitching together data silos, building a layer of enterprise intelligence, and only then deploying the agents that run the workflows.

"The GCCs that will be best in class are the ones that today are an innovation center for their parent, are already thinking through their 2030 talent mix, and have embarked on the journey to become an agentic enterprise." — Aditya Jayaraman

Why Culture Decides Success

For all the focus on AI and operating models, Connolly keeps returning to a less technical lesson — one drawn from the early, difficult days of Target India, which "really wasn't a raving success from day one." What ultimately separated the wins from the stalls wasn't the technology stack. Looking back, she says, the difference was "the teams I got to work with and what made them tick — not just how technology played into success, but how culture played into the recipe for success." It's a theme the series will keep coming back to: for CIOs, operating model and culture prove as decisive as infrastructure and cost.

What's Next in this Series

Connolly and Jayaraman close by setting up the conversations ahead — beginning with the part most leaders avoid: why GCCs fail or stall, and how to manage that risk before strategizing about 2030. As Jayaraman puts it, "before learning how to do something, one should learn how not to do something — and that comes best by learning from prior failures."

Listen to ChatGCC Episode 1 — including an introduction to our hosts, the complete market data, and the hosts' take on the road to 2030.

Frequently Asked Questions

How big is the India GCC market? India hosts roughly 1,800 Global Capability Centers employing over 1.9 million professionals, with an estimated three new GCCs announced every week, driven largely by U.S. and European enterprises.

How are GCCs adopting AI? About 83% of GCCs are scaling generative AI, around 58% are investing in agentic AI, and roughly 71% have launched reskilling initiatives. JPMorgan Chase, for example, runs AI-driven compliance, risk, and analytics workloads with over 55,000 employees in India.

What are the stages of GCC maturity? GCC 1.0 focused on cost arbitrage, GCC 1.5 leveraged talent to create business value, and GCC 2.0 is AI-infused and outcome-driven.

What makes a best-in-class Global Capability Center? Best-in-class GCCs operate as innovation hubs rather than low-cost outposts, prepare for an autonomous "GCC of 2030" with an agentic talent mix, and treat the shift as a journey — data, then enterprise intelligence, then agents.

ChatGCC is hosted by Patricia Connolly and Aditya Jayaraman, and backed by SMC Squared and Hexaware.

Episode Transcript

Introduction

Patricia Connolly 

Hello and welcome to ChatGCC, where global business leaders share how the world's most effective global capability centers are built and scaled. I'm Patricia Connolly. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

And I'm Adi Jayaraman. 

Patricia Connolly 

In each episode, we explore the strategies, decisions, and real-world experiences shaping the future of GCCs. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

This series is brought to you by Hexavare Technologies and SMC Square, proven strategic partners to organizations building high-impact GCCs.

Patricia Connolly 

Let's get into it. 

Discussion

Patricia Connolly 

Hi, Adi. Thanks for joining me on our new ChatGCC podcast series. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Pat, thank you. It's a pleasure and an honor to be doing this with you. 

Patricia Connolly 

I am so pleased to be here with you. It's like we've launched a startup with innovative and edgy conversations on GCCs. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

I like that startup part. Yes, that's a lot of me from my prior background. Yes, that's what we are. But our aim, I think, in this series, Pat, is to talk about subjects that leaders need. Talk about the realities of building GCCs, especially how and why they succeed. why they fail very importantly or stop. 

Patricia Connolly 

Right. And I do think it's important to talk about all aspects of it because we can learn a lot from failure points and also talking about managing risk. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Absolutely. 

Patricia Connolly 

Yeah, I know we're excited to get into it. I suppose we should start by properly introducing ourselves. What do you think? 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Pat. I'm at Hexaware in India, and I've just taken on this role recently. But before we get into all that, I think we should start at the beginning about how we met. And if memory serves me correctly, this was Hexaware's New Jersey offices, both of us new to Hexaware back in May or June, 2025, I suppose. 

Patricia Connolly 

Yeah, a chance meeting was right when I was getting introduced to Hexaware. And there you were as one of the first people that I met. So very, very lucky on my part and happy to have formed a great partnership with you as we've marched into this first year with Hexaware. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Likewise, likewise. I just want to say that what you have created is something extremely unique in the market. And I am one for strategic differentiation. I'm a student of strategic differentiation, let's say. So lots of respect and indeed the honor to be working with you on this panel. 

Patricia Connolly 

Well, thank you. Thank you. That's very kind. We're excited to share our learnings and ready to talk about it. But let's begin with you. You know, talk a little bit more about your role and how you kind of came into the position that you have today. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Yeah, surely. So as mentioned, I lead Hexware in the India market. So I focus on, enabling outcomes for India enterprises and for GCCs in India as well. A little bit about my background, I just moved to India after about 23 years in the US. So think of me as a Bay Area tech guy. I've been in telecoms for a long time, then a series of startups in data analytics, and then in GenAI. And then in the middle, there was a very exciting stint where I was leading the high-tech, I was a technology leader for the high-tech vertical at AWS. So think startup, think, you know, cloud, and then think a lot of technology. I describe my vision as I feel that there is the world of enterprise technology, and then there is the world of customers looking for outcomes - and between the two, there is a huge chasm. The purpose of my life has been to try and bridge that chasm and enable customers, leverage technology to be helpful, to be successful. And that's pretty much what I've done most of my life, Pat. I do need to come back and tell you where my GCC interest is, but over to you first. 

Patricia Connolly 

Well, I definitely have found your background very fitting for this conversation, and I've appreciated working with you so far. Just a little bit on my background, perhaps. Largely, we are talking about starting in IT and staying in IT throughout my career, beginning with KPMG. I really learned to think about large business problems and opportunities and think strategically. It really became a passion for me. And so KPNG was a great place for me to begin my career and then pivoted for a full 25 years over to Target. So working in big corporate in an organization that had a great leadership development platform and great technology. We had a tremendous opportunity to see and grow many aspects of technology, including Target India. So I claim to have sat in many leadership seats and enjoyed and felt challenged by all of them, including a lot of customized development. We launched SAP under me with BI and data and operations. And then, of course, the whole question of Target India and how did that get started really is formative to my career. I carried that on and worked a bit for Polaris to help them start with their India Center about 12 years ago. But really, I think the differentiating thing for me in my career, looking back very humbly, is thinking about the teams that I got to work with and what made them really tick, what made it work. And especially with starting with Target India and working with very large global teams, thinking about not just how technology played into success, but really how culture played into the recipe for success. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Wow, is what I was going to say. That is so fascinating. I'm tempted to actually stop you and ask you so many questions, Pat, but then we'll run out of time for this episode. So I know we're going to cover a lot of that through our series, but I just want to say what a fascinating experience that is. 

Patricia Connolly 

I've been really, really blessed to just have gone on this journey. And at this point, we've done a lot of work with SMC in the last 10 years and have been really enjoying leading that organization, now part of Hexaware. So we've racked up a nice, nice role of successes, 35 plus now GCCs, providing over 5,000 team members to U.S. and multinational companies like Ecolab, Callaway Topgolf, Deloitte, Digi-Key, Seagate, Agility Health, and many others. All of them are unique situations where we've had to strategically think with leaders on how to make it successful. But it has been quite a joyful journey, I would say very challenging, but really, really a great journey. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

That is fascinating again. And I'm sure as we progress through this series, we're going to pick on some of these very successful use cases and highlight quite a few of strategic points and learning as well. 

Patricia Connolly 

So talk just a little bit more about how you're intersecting with GCCs and your role in leadership in India. I'm excited to share more on that. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Absolutely, surely. So going back when I was still in the Bay Area, both as part of startups and as part of technology, of AWS and hyperscalers, essentially, I did get a chance to, while I was, my teams were predominantly working with global customers, we did get a chance to interact quite extensively with their India teams and other similar GCC teams. So that is where my intersection with GCCs and my interest in GCCs started. So now what I always felt was that between the worlds of cloud and startup, there is a lot in common or there is a lot that GCCs can emulate from how those particular worlds have evolved. And so really my focus now is, as I lead Hexavare in this India market, is to try and bring some of those learnings to the GCC ecosystem here, and so that they are able to leverage Hexavare and SMC in achieving some very, very radically different outcomes. So that's the, in addition to all the tech that we do for our customers, Pat. That is my specific interest in GCCs. 

Patricia Connolly 

Yeah, that's great. And that will be so valuable as we continue on in these podcast sessions. I think having multiple perspectives at the table is super important. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Absolutely. But I want to, I know you briefly mentioned this, but could we get into a little bit more detail about how you got started building GCCs. 

Patricia Connolly 

Yeah, absolutely. I distinctly remember the day when our CEO and CIO at Target gathered all the leaders and said, we're going to build a captive and we're going to do this in India. And stick around if you're interested in learning more. They kind of got through their presentation, but they were happy to take on some deeper conversations and I stayed. I was so excited to hear this. And it really didn't surprise me as a strategic move. So this was about 2004. They were considering this. They were giving everybody kind of early signs that Target India, as it became named over time, was in the cards for this Fortune 50-sized company. But what was really interesting early on was we selected a vendor and the vendor in about three, four months time pretty much was failing out. And once that became known, Target deployed multiple leaders to make sure that we weren't gonna fail. And I got in that mix and was very much a part of the US side of making sure that the technology, the infrastructure, the people, the culture transcended to target India. And of course, Target sent an expat leader to India as well, who later became one of my partners at SMC Squared. So the genesis story was really not about Target India being a raving success right from day one. It actually, it actually began with recognizing that there were some deep challenges that we needed to deal with. So, you know, Target was a really strong IT organization, a lot of custom code, huge team. And thinking back, you know, that was really, that captive version of Target India really became the footprint of what became more recently, 10 years ago, SMC Squared's genesis story. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

That is fascinating. So for the audience, so Hexavare, SMC Squared is now part of Hexaware. So tell me, what is life like now? Who are you meeting? What do you do in Hexavare? And then of course, how does all this come down to GCCs and the trends in GCCs and so on? Fill us on that part, Pat. 

Patricia Connolly 

Yeah, so we were acquired by Carlyle and brought in as part of Hexaware, and it was really an excellent match, I would say. And now I continue to lead SMC Squared, that name, that brand, that operating company still exists fully, but I now lead this operation on a global basis. So our operations have expanded and we're really happy about that. It's really brought about a great play, not only in where we can build GCCs, but where our customers potentially are really across all continents. But I'm speaking mainly to C-level leaders, tech and business, you know, titles like CIO, CTO, CFO, CEO, all of the expected titles, but also, you know, chief digital, chief AI officers, enterprise leaders, and procurement, HR, I think this is a really a broad group of people that have been made aware, especially over the last, I would say in the US, the last five years, about GCCs. So there's a lot of discussion on this topic. A lot of organizations have moved this direction or are thinking about it and have a lot of questions. But at the end of the day, they're all looking to you know, answer points around how do they engage technology wisely and build value. And of course, they're very concerned about optimizing their operating costs. It really comes down to many different levers that need to get pulled at the same time, strategically together, and thinking about this is a very complex matter. So those are the things that I have a very very exciting chance to sit down and talk with leaders about many questions. And I will leave you with one final thought on this. They are all thinking about the talent factor. How does this all come together? How do they attract great talent to work for their enterprises? 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Wow. That's very impressive. But I'm going to ask you one last question here. So, the issues that you are discussing with customers today, with the people that you meet today, how are they different, if at all, from what you were discussing with the same sets of people, let's say, four years ago? 

Patricia Connolly 

You know, that's a great question. I would say earlier versions of these conversations were largely about cost arbitrage. Cost is on everyone's mind. and optimizing is definitely still a flavor of these conversations. But cost arbitrage was, I would say, king. It was the only card in most cases. And what we've seen over time is really the maturing of talent and confidence in GCCs and have grown from thinking just solely about cost containment to how do we leverage the best talent, and what they can do to provide value in an organization, which probably leads us into something that moves us from a GCC 1.0 version to maybe a 1.5. Now, today, we're leading into GCC 2.0, which is all about AI and AI-infused organizations. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

That makes so much sense. So, Pat, having covered all that, I think we should, a good point to start is to basically say, assess what is the baseline? Where is the India GCC market today? Could you shed some light on it? 

Patricia Connolly 

Yeah, absolutely. So we've seen just a considerable amount of growth in the number of GCCs and the employees for multinational companies. in these GCCs. So right now, the statistics as we know them are this. India hosts, India alone hosts about 1,800 GCCs employing over 1.9 million professionals. That's tremendous. We've seen continued growth. Anecdotally, you know, the thinking is that about 3 GCCs are announced every week. So we're just on a huge pattern of growth, both from the US and in Europe. I would say these are the two big areas that are growing. We're also seeing some growth pattern in Asia, Asia-Pac, Australia, other places. But overall, the word is we're growing. Now, regarding AI, about 83% of GCCs are now scaling generative AI products and projects. About 58% are actively investing in agentic AI, and many plan for this in the next 12 months. So we're going to continue to see, of course, AI on the table. 71 have launched reskilling initiatives to close that AI readiness gap. This is a tremendous topic. And we're seeing some mature, super large examples to point to, as well as I would say mid-size examples to point to of great successes. One of the largest success stories in the GCC space is JPMorgan Chase. So huge employer in India with over 55,000 employees. And they're running AI-driven compliance risk and analytic workloads. So there's a lot going on in this space. You know, I think we're hearing a lot about what's best in class, and there's a lot of talk about this, and I'm sure from your perspective and an Indian perspective, could you tell us a bit about what you're thinking is best in class for GCCs? 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Absolutely. So over the past, say, six months that I've been in this role, but I've had the opportunity to meet customers across the length and the breadth of the country and a lot of GCC customers. So what I'm saying is what you provided just now are all the data points. And what I'm seeing and hearing with customers is actually the story that is built around those data points. So the very successful GCCs today, in my opinion, are focused on three things, Pat. The first thing I see is that this cohort of GCCs has already made the transition from thinking of the India GCC as just a lower cost outpost to actually thinking of it as the hub of innovation for the entire enterprise, the mothership and the parent. That is very common. That's a thread that you cannot miss when you're talking to some of these best in class GCCs.The second thing I have picked up on is that in a sense, these companies, these GCCs are readying for what I call 2030, the GCC of 2030. They're readying for the possibility or the imminent possibility, I should say, that a lot of their workflows are going to be autonomous, run by agents, and so on. And that is going to have an impact for the kind of talent that they actually need to sustain that kind of an enterprise. They're already thinking ahead there, and therefore, they are starting to think of their talent strategy. What kind of people do I need for an agentic enterprise is something that you can feel very strongly when you're talking to these customers. The last thing I will say is that, and this is a very pet theme for me, Pat, and you yourself have seen me say this. It's going to be a journey from where companies are today to where they will be in 2030 as an autonomous enterprise. And that doesn't happen at the flick of a switch. It is a journey. That's a journey that entails stitching together your data silos, building a layer of enterprise intelligence, and then building your agents that are going to be running those workflows. The last point I want to make is that some of these companies, you will already see them working through that agenda, working on their data layer, on their enterprise intelligence layer, and thinking through what their agentic layer is going to be. So net-net, in my view, I'm willing to bet that the companies that are going to be really best in class, the GCCs, I would say, that are going to be best in class are the ones that today are an innovation center for their parent, and are already thinking through what is the talent mix going to look like in that GCC for 2030 and have already embarked upon that journey, Pat, to become that agentic enterprise for the parent in 2030. 

Patricia Connolly 

Yeah, very interesting comments and very thoughtful as we look forward to future conversations. Adi, I wish we could keep going here, but we do want to think ahead maybe to our next couple conversations and love the perspective that you bring. So thank you so much. I think we probably want to lean into what are we going to be talking about going forward? We see an evolution from labor arbitrage to AI powered, outcome driven, really innovation generating GCCs. And we're really excited about the potential of this, but there are things that we probably need to address because we've seen some pitfalls. We've seen things that I guess I would say not many people want to talk about because it certainly is human to not want to talk about what has failed, but we can learn a lot from these things. What do you think, Adi? Do you think that's a reasonable place to start? 

Aditya Jayaraman 

See, the one thing I've learned across my career is before learning how to do something, Pat, one should learn how not to do something. And that comes best by learning from prior failures. And again, in Amazon, we had the saying that, you know, you fail fast, but you fail small, and then you make sure that you never fail that way again. So I'm 100% with you. We should talk about why in our experience we see some GCCs fail so that we know how to avoid those failure points before one can actually start strategizing about what does the GCC of 2030 look like. And I think between you and me, we can offer some prescient observations and advice to mitigating these risks, Pat. 

Closing

Patricia Connolly 

Yeah, I think that's great. Let's take it forward to there. So we'll be looking forward to you all joining us for episode two coming up. Adi, any final words before we head out for today? 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Let's plan for success, Pat. Hopefully our episodes help our audience do that. 

Patricia Connolly 

Love it. All right. Well, bye, y'all. I hope we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for joining us for episode one. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Thank you. 

Patricia Connolly 

That brings us to the end of this episode of ChatGCC. If something we discussed today resonated with your experience or challenged it, we want to hear from you. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

This podcast is shaped by the conversations we have with leaders like you. Your questions, your real-world experiences, and the challenges you're navigating inside your own organization are what drive the topics we explore. 

Patricia Connolly 

So if there's a question you'd like us to take on, a story you'd like to share, or a perspective you think our listeners would need to hear, please reach out. You can find us along with episode notes and additional resources at www.smc2.com. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

And if today's conversation was useful, share it with a colleague who's navigating these same questions. We're building a community of global technology leaders, one conversation at a time. And we'd love for you to be a part of it. 

Patricia Connolly 

Absolutely. ChatGCC is brought to you by Hexaware Technologies and SMC Squared, proven strategic partners to global enterprises building and scaling their GCCs. 

Aditya Jayaraman 

Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.