EY Survey: 58% of India’s GCCs Now Investing in Agentic AI as Innovation Accelerates
EY GCC Pulse Survey shows rapid rise in GenAI adoption, expanding innovation mandates, and growing global decision making roles for India based centres.
India, Nov 24 : Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are accelerating their move from AI pilots to full-scale implementation, with 58% already investing in Agentic AI and another 29% planning to scale within the next year, according to the EY GCC Pulse Survey 2025 released on Sunday.
The survey highlights a major transformation in the role of India-based GCCs, which are increasingly evolving into global strategic and innovation hubs. This shift is being powered by rising GenAI adoption, stronger digital maturity, and expanding organisational mandates.
Conducted between August and October 2025, the survey captured responses from GCC leaders across multiple sectors, with an average centre size of around 800 employees.
GenAI momentum remains strong, with 83% of GCCs investing in the technology. Pilots rose from 37% in 2024 to 43% in 2025, supported by significant upskilling—81% of centres have trained internal teams on GenAI. The most common use cases include customer service (65%), finance (53%), operations (49%), and IT and cybersecurity (45%). EY describes Agentic AI as the “next frontier” of automation, marking a shift from experimentation to full enterprise adoption.
Innovation capabilities inside GCCs are expanding rapidly. About 67% have created dedicated innovation teams and incubation platforms to fuel structured global idea pipelines. EY also unveiled its Intelligent GCC solution suite to help organisations build AI-native centres and embed autonomous intelligence across value chains.
India-based GCCs are increasingly taking on responsibilities once reserved for global headquarters. Over half (52%) now share accountability for global decision-making, 26% are regularly consulted, and 20% are moving toward full ownership of select global functions.
Top strategic priorities for GCCs include digital transformation (61%), cost optimisation (54%), and functional expansion (51%). Technology and transformation continue to command the highest share of GCC budgets (25%), followed by talent development (23%).
As operating models evolve, 92% of GCCs aim to deliver value beyond cost efficiency, 87% plan to manage end-to-end global processes, and 84% continue operating in-house, though outsourcing has increased to 12%.
Bengaluru remains India’s biggest GCC hub (46%), followed by Pune (39%) and Hyderabad (24%). Tier-2 cities such as Ahmedabad and Jaipur are emerging as new investment destinations.
Talent priorities remain central, with GCCs focusing on reskilling (71%), tech-led growth (70%), and niche hiring in areas like domain expertise (66%), AI/ML (63%), and data engineering/BI (54%). Attrition fell to 9% in 2025, down from 13% in 2023.
Cybersecurity maturity remains moderate, with only 7% of GCCs having fully developed Cyber Centres of Excellence. Oversight of third-party data access improved significantly, rising from 44% to 60%.
Key risks for GCCs include talent shortages, rising people costs, and retention challenges. Transfer pricing remains the most significant regulatory issue (63%), followed by compliance complexity and data privacy concerns (42%).
