AMCHAM organized the third edition of the GCC Summit on February 17th in New Delhi with the theme ‘Future-Proofing U.S.-India Partnership.” Ms. Ranjana Khanna, Director General CEO, AMCHAM welcomed speakers and delegates. She spoke about GCCs being a catalyst in accelerating digital transformation globally. Mr. Prakash Bodla, Chairman – Hyderabad Chapter, AMCHAM; Chairman – GCC Committee, AMCHAM and Managing Director & Vice President – Engineering, Carrier Technologies India Limited gave an overview on the agenda for the summit. He highlighted that 50% of global GCCs are now in India employing more than 3.5 million people. Summit 3.0 was an endeavour to study and discuss challenges to glean how industry and government, together, can overcome them. The keynote address was given by Mr. Rajesh Agrawal, Additional Secretary, Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India who gave an economic overview of the U.S.-India relationship. He spoke about the trade complementarities, natural synergies, various ongoing dialogues like Trade Policy Forum, QUAD, IPEF and the latest initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET). He highlighted that GCCs are now the true representations of their global enterprises and the government is committed to make the overall business climate more hospitable. He touched upon pertinent areas of skilling, start-up ecosystem, demographic dividend and cost arbitrage in India. He suggested GCCs to explore tier II and tier III cities and work closely with the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship for focusing on reskilling/upskilling to meet future needs. The keynote was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Ms. Bhawna Agarwal, Co–Chairperson – GCC Committee, AMCHAM and Country Head – Strategy & Growth, HPE. The discussion focussed on ease of doing business in tier II/III cities, need for private sector advisory group, AI/ML/robotics, talent retention, etc.

‘Future of Work at GCCs’ was moderated by Mr. Anshul Jain, Managing Director, India and South East Asia, Cushman & Wakefield with panelists Mr. Gaurav Mehta, Associate Vice President – Human Resources (Sr. Director), Cvent, Mr. Amit Vadera, Managing Director – Protiviti & Dr. Kiranmai Pendyala, Head of Human Resources, Western Digital. The panel discussed the existing 21% skill gap between demand and supply, motivation and retention issues, hybrid work, diversity at workplaces and innovation, amongst others.

Thematic track one on ‘Future Growth Story’ started with a report launch by Mr. Anshul Jain, Managing Director, India and South East Asia, Cushman & Wakefield and Mr. Prakash Bodla, Chairman – Hyderabad Chapter, AMCHAM; Chairman – GCC Committee, AMCHAM & Managing Director & Vice President – Engineering, Carrier Technologies India Limited. The report ‘Global Capability Centres – Powering the Growth of Indian Commercial Real Estate’ focuses on how GCCs in India will be a key cohort driving major transformation in the Indian real estate space by not only ushering in fresh demand for high quality spaces, but also become a catalyst for change towards sustainable buildings, innovation at work, and upgrading of the wellbeing quotient. India is set to embrace a host of GCC occupiers looking to exploit its large digital ecosystem, tech talent pool, and resilient economy. The full report can be viewed here: https://amchamindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GCC-Report-15-February.pdf

It was followed by a panel discussion on GCC expansion to North-East Region (NER) moderated by Mr. Prakash Bodla with panelists Mr. Harpreet Singh, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, Government of India, Mr. Abhishek Chandra, Special Secretary (Industries), Government of Tripura and Mr. Devesh Deval, Resident Commissioner, Government of Manipur. The panel talked about the proactive role of MDoNER in unleashing true potential of the north eastern states, ways to harness potential, state initiatives in Tripura and Manipur like setting up a skills university in Agartala. They also discussed how IT infrastructure has improved in NER and focus on improving physical infrastructure too. Investment opportunities in NER were also shared by the panelists.

The panel ‘Building World-class Products from India to the World’ was moderated by Mr. Manoj Marwah, Partner, Business Consulting, EY India with panelists Mr. Pravin Goel, Managing Director and Country Head, Blackrock, Mr. Abhishek Sinha, Vice President, Clover Product Engineering Centre, Global Services, Fiserv and Mr. Kush Kamra, SVP – Global Shared Services and Chairman & Managing Director – Global Operations Support Centres, MetLife. With an increase in product-based innovation and use of technologies like artificial intelligence and analytics to drive process efficiency at GCCs, the panel discussed how GCCs can continue to enhance their service portfolio while being an integral link to their headquarters.

Mr. Atul Kumar Tiwari, Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India gave the keynote address on ‘Future of Work at GCCs.’ He spoke about the existing gap between formal education and skill requirements for being industry ready. The new education policy 2020 has a focus on skilling and aims to bring skilling into mainstream education by its inclusion in curriculums. He encouraged industry to promote partnerships especially in enhancing digital capabilities and future trends like – IoTs, AI, ML, coding, etc. and to take lead in tier II/III cities. He also touched upon PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana and the National Credit Framework (NCrF) that assigns credit-based value to different levels of learning – including academics, skilling and experiential learning. Mr. Tiwari said that the need of the hour is to do continuous skilling, reskilling and upskilling. The audience interacted with the Secretary on topics covering train the trainer programs, GCCs ecosystem, curriculum to be more industry related, etc.

Thematic track two, ‘Service Expansion’ started with a panel discussion on ‘How will ESG Performance Shape your Future?’ moderated by Mr. Utpal S. Ashar, Associate Partner & North America Go to Market Leader for GCC, IBM with Ms. R.V. Jayanthi, Director – Sustainability & ESG solutions, Protiviti, Mr. Vinay Arora, Sr. Director, S&P Global and Mr. Rohit Shukla, Sr. Director Digital, Valvoline. They discussed emerging ESG priorities for enterprises, role that GCCs can/are playing to support the enterprise sustainability agenda, newer areas of ESG scope of work, challenges faced and core skills required for setting up an ESG focussed capability CoE within a GCC.

The panel on ‘Creating a Global Value Organization’ was moderated by Mr. Arindam Sen, Partner and GCC Leader, EY India with featured speakers Mr. Jaikumar Subrmanian, Partner – Global GCC Market Activation, IBM, Ms. Arpita Das, Director IT & Delivery, Kohler, Mr. Deshant Kaila, Managing Director, PepsiCo GBS India and Mr. Sudhir Kamath, Finance Head South Asia, Trimble who shared their views, experiences, challenges and road map around the topic.

The next panel was ‘Leveraging the Power of Ecosystem Partnerships.’ It was moderated by Mr. Pranav Duggal, Partner & Executive Director – Global GCCs, IBM with panelists Mr. Gaurav Gupta, Partner, Consulting, Deloitte India, Mr. Sunil Venkatesh, Partner, Technology Consulting, EY India and Ms. Shalini Pillay, Office Managing Partner – Bangalore and GCC Leader, KPMG India. The panel discussed current and future potential of ecosystem partnerships from inception to the maturity stage and ways to involve other partners in this ecosystem for service expansion.

It was followed by a demonstration on the metaverse by Mr. Sandeep Alur, Director – Microsoft Technology Center, Microsoft India. The session ‘Demystifying the Metaverse’ touched upon how the metaverse is expanding rapidly and that companies will need to move past buzzwords to understand the experience and unlock its true value.

‘Measure to Manage – Importance of Bench-marking for GCCs’ was a discussion between Ms. Shalini Pillay, Office Managing Partner – Bangalore and GCC Leader, KPMG India and Mr. Gaurav Ahluwalia, Managing Director, Human Resources, JP Morgan Chase. They discussed the evolution of GCCs being productive and dynamic with the focus now on enhancing capabilities and knowledge which indicates the strategic nature of GCCs today. Benchmarking has become essential to manage the performance of an individual and GCCs. It has become increasingly important for GCCs to measure and articulate the value delivered to the organization based on well-defined metrics covering labor arbitrage, efficiency and effectiveness, business partnering, control and compliance and innovation. It is equally essential that they are investigated on a periodic basis and revisited over time.

Mr. Jayesh Sanghvi, Vice Chairman – Hyderabad Chapter, AMCHAM and Partner, EY gave a presentation on ‘Policy, Legal and Tax Implications of New GCC Set-ups in India.’ The event concluded with a vote of thanks by Ms. Bhawna Agarwal, Co–Chairperson – GCC Committee, AMCHAM and Country Head – Strategy & Growth, HPE. More than 150 members attended summit. The event was supported by Cushman & Wakefield, IBM, Arcesium, Carrier, EY, Protiviti, Fiserv, S&P Global and HPE.