ANSR has published a new thought leadership brief titled “5 Trends Redefining the GCC Landscape in 2026,” released on January 7, 2026. The publication analyzes how Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in India are evolving into strategic engines of AI-first enterprise transformation and outlines the key shifts expected to shape the model over the coming year. Additional information on ANSR’s GCC model and capabilities is available at https://ansr.com/global-capability-center/.
GCCs Become Business-First AI Engines. The brief notes that leading GCCs are moving from generic AI experimentation to business-first AI adoption anchored in clearly defined enterprise priorities. Centers that lead this transition increasingly align AI initiatives with performance indicators related to revenue, customer experience, resilience, and risk, ensuring that investments are tied directly to measurable business outcomes rather than isolated pilots. In these GCCs, AI is positioned as a mechanism to amplify strategies that already work, rather than as a stand-alone innovation agenda. Clarity of purpose, robust problem definition, and strong integration with enterprise systems and governance are identified as prerequisites for scaling models, platforms, or tools, helping AI accelerate value creation while reducing operational friction.
GCC Leaders Emerge as a Strategic Force. The brief highlights the growing strategic importance of GCC-based leadership within global organizations. With leadership demand in GCCs projected to rise significantly by 2030, enterprises are placing greater emphasis on leaders who can combine strategic thinking and ownership with cultural fluency and an understanding of AI-enabled operating models. High-impact GCC leaders are described as those who interpret emerging signals, translate them into clear priorities, and execute with speed and discipline. They increasingly influence cross-functional outcomes, strengthen integration with headquarters, and build teams oriented toward delivering business impact rather than focusing solely on operational efficiency.
GCCs Shift to Hybrid Agentic Operating Models. The publication identifies the emergence of hybrid agentic operating models in which human expertise and autonomous AI systems work together as a coordinated operating layer. Under this construct, human teams define intent, set guardrails, and intervene where judgment and context are critical, while AI agents handle continuous execution across systems, including monitoring, triage, and workflow orchestration. This shift is expected to reshape both the cost structure and talent architecture of GCCs. Roles evolve from pure execution to orchestration and design, with analysts and managers increasingly supervising and shaping agentic systems rather than manually performing all process steps, positioning GCCs as execution grids for global enterprises.
Emerging Locations Become Mainstream GCC Hubs. The brief also highlights the rapid expansion of distributed GCC networks beyond traditional metropolitan hubs. Enterprises are adopting hub-plus-one and multi-hub models that incorporate emerging cities such as Visakhapatnam, Coimbatore, Trivandrum, Indore, and Bhubaneswar as specialized capability centers for cybersecurity, AI operations, digital risk, and domain-led analytics. These locations are gaining prominence due to access to new talent pools, lower attrition, and improving infrastructure, rather than cost considerations alone. As AI reduces location-based capability gaps, the divide between Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities continues to narrow, allowing distributed hubs to play an equal role in capability building and innovation within global GCC portfolios.
Culture Becomes a Performance Multiplier in AI-First GCCs. Finally, the brief emphasizes that culture is emerging as a decisive differentiator for GCCs operating in an AI-first enterprise landscape. Centers that treat culture as a strategic capability are investing in continuous upskilling, new career pathways, and environments that enable employees to work confidently alongside intelligent systems, supporting what the publication describes as a “reinventor” workforce. In this context, culture shapes how decisions flow, how teams collaborate across borders, and how responsibly and rapidly AI is adopted across the enterprise. As more GCCs are established in India, the brief concludes that infrastructure and incentives are increasingly becoming baseline expectations, while the ability to align global enterprise ethos with India’s talent aspirations will define which GCCs emerge as leaders in 2026 and beyond. The full analysis is available in ANSR’s thought leadership brief, “5 Trends Redefining the GCC Landscape in 2026”.
About ANSR
ANSR is the definitive global leader in establishing and operating Global Capability Centers. With over 175 GCCs built for more than 100 Fortune 500 companies across India, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, ANSR combines strategic insight, proven execution, and proprietary technologies to help enterprises build long-term global capabilities. As pioneers of the GCC-as-a-Service (GaaS) model and creators of the 1Wrk platform, ANSR accelerates enterprise transformation by enabling organizations to build future-ready teams in talent-rich innovation hubs. With over a decade of experience and a high-impact team of GCC specialists, ANSR delivers predictable, measurable business outcomes through world-class capability centers. To know more, visit www.ansr.com.
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Clint Thomas
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