India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are not just low-cost support in a new form, but are areas where cutting edge work is taking place, Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) V. Anantha Nageswaran said on Thursday (July 9, 2026). As such, these GCC jobs are also at a relatively lower risk of being replaced by Artificial Intelligence (AI), he added. 

However, the CEA did warn against the dangers of complacency, saying that other countries are already copying India’s model. 

“It is cutting edge and increasingly so,” Mr. Nageswaran said while speaking at a session during the Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) GCC Business Summit.

“Global banks run their risk systems and trading platforms in Mumbai and Bangalore and elsewhere as well, car makers design their vehicles’ embedded systems from Chennai and Pune, semiconductor firms carry out chip design, pharmaceutical companies run clinical analytics here, and consumer firms build and own entire digital products here in India,” he added.

Mr. Nagesawaran said that the intellectual property created in these centers is real, with the patents being filed here, the products shipped from India and global roles increasingly held by people sitting in India. 

The threat of AI

The CEA also sought to answer whether these GCCs would be under threat from the rise of AI and would these GCC jobs be automated soon. 

“Part of the model is indeed exposed,” Mr. Nageswaran conceded. “The work that was routine, repetitive and rule bound is exactly the work that AI does most easily and most cheaply as well. If a centre’s value rests only on doing simple tasks at low cost, then the value is under real threat. We should not pretend otherwise.”

However, he also said that this is not where most Indian centres are today, and that this was not the direction in which they are headed. 

“Artificial intelligence does not build, deploy or govern itself,” Mr. Nageswaran explained. “Someone has to design these systems, train them, test them, correct them and hold them to account. Someone has to decide where they should be used and where they must not be used.”

“Someone has to carry the responsibility when they fail,” he added. “And that work is expanding and not shrinking. And a large and growing share of this kind of work is being done in India.”

No time for complacency

The CEA, however, cautioned against complacency, saying that standing still meant allowing others to catch up.

“Other countries are watching us and copying us,” he asserted. “Our costs are rising. In some skills, our talent is already scarce, so indispensability is not a title that India can hold on to forever.”

He added that the move from cost centres to capability centres, and from execution to innovation has to be made by firms and by people, with the government acting as a support. 

Also read | How to get hired by GCCs? 

“Skilling is the clearest case,” Mr. Nageswaran said. “We produce a very large number of graduates each year. We do not yet produce enough of those who are ready on day one. By some estimates, fewer than half of them are ready for the job on the day they arrive.” 

“Closing that gap means universities, industry and the government working together, not one after the other, but at the same time,” he said.

He further said that the position India currently holds in the global capability centre market was one that it has to keep earning, over and over. 

“The moment we believe we have arrived is the moment others begin to catch up,” he said. “So let us not celebrate too early. Let us treat this success not as a finishing line, but as a foundation or a milestone.”