GCC TRAILBLAZERS

Recognizing winners of the NASSCOM GCC Awards 2021:

the Global Capability Centers that have made extraordinary
contributions to their enterprises, the country, and the global
services community

2021
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CONTENTS

01 FOREWORDS | 3

02 AWARDS INTRODUCTIONS | 5

03 JURY | 6

04 AWARDS CATEGORY | 7

Innovation Excellence 08

Impactful GCC Driven Collaboration 18

Excelling During the Crisis 26

Excellence in Building Talent of the Future 34

Exemplary Value-add 43

05 APPENDIX | 53

Demographic 54

Team 55
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Foreword
GCCs Trailblazers

In the last decade, GCCs sharpened their focus on innovation

and ownership, exponentially contributing to the growth of their
enterprises. The GCC industry has made great strides, and their
resilience and commitment to people and their businesses have
especially been proven in the last 18 months. GCCs have
emerged as powerhouses for their global enterprises, driving Sukanya Roy, Director GCC
thought leadership for the future. and BPM, NASSCOM

It is our pleasure to celebrate this journey and the truly humbling. Starting from new product
community through the NASSCOM GCC Awards. development in IoT and using blockchain to drive
The NASSCOM GCC Awards is a way to honor business to solving the global supply chain crisis
the best, provide a platform to celebrate this and designing faster cancer diagnoses, it is
journey for the cutting edge and critical work been indeed remarkable to see GCCs leverage quality
done, and inspire the industry at large. talent and capabilities in India to drive ownership,
leadership, and innovation with stellar
We had an opportunity to look at some exemplary
achievements and outcomes.
GCC contributions to the tech world as well as to
India during this process. Stories of innovation We thank all 110 organizations that participated
excellence, global collaboration, talent for the and presented over 250 submissions. We take a
future, and exemplary value-add illustrate how moment to congratulate the winners and
GCCs are focused on generating the highest everybody who participated. This compendium
impact on their businesses and preparing for the highlights the good work these organizations are
future. Given the events of the past 18 months, doing and celebrates the winners’ achievements.
we have added a special category, crisis
Thank you again for being part of the awards
management, to demonstrate how GCCs took on
journey, with special thanks you to our esteemed
leadership roles to ensure business continuity and
jurors and strategic award partner, Everest Group,
excellence as well as employee and community
for running the evaluation process with us
wellbeing during the challenging times.
seamlessly. I hope you enjoy reading these
The submissions have been nothing short of stories and experience the powerhouse effect of
overwhelming. The range of problem solving is India’s GCC sector.
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Foreword
GCCs Trailblazers

The value proposition of India GCCs has evolved significantly over

the past decade. GCCs today are at the forefront of innovation
across products and processes and are creating competitive
advantage for their global enterprises. With an increasing number of
global leadership roles in the GCCs, they are providing end-to-end
support on complex work areas to deliver business impact that is Prashray Kala, Vice President,
well beyond cost savings and operational improvement. Everest Group

At its core, the NASSCOM GCC awards event strategic decisions related to their use and delivery
is a unique platform to recognize and reward India of sourcing services and the GCC model. To see
GCCs’ success stories and enable learning within GCCs evolving as true extensions of their global
the GCC community. From leading global innovation enterprise headquarters is wholeheartedly
efforts to driving skilling initiatives to managing satisfying. There is still a lot of untapped potential
external ecosystem collaborations, GCCs have for GCCs, across the breadth and depth of the
shown immense maturity and ownership to drive service portfolio, as well as enabling more
end-customer goals and support continuous innovation and ownership, and we truly believe that
business operations during the unprecedented India GCCs are poised for greater heights –
disruption of the past 18 months. integrating more deeply with their enterprises,
blurring administrative lines across geographies,
GCCs have demonstrated remarkable resiliency
and expanding revenue impact potential.
and agility not only by navigating successfully
through the pandemic but also in using the crisis as We would like to take this opportunity to thank all
an opportunity to step up and expand their impact, GCCs that participated this year and made this
enabling smooth transitions to remote working, and event a tremendous success. A special
providing an extraordinary level of support to congratulations to the award winners – your
employees, their families, and the community. achievements and best practices serve as a beacon
These accomplishments reinforce the ingenuity for the GCC community. And finally, we would like
and capability of the talent in India and are leading to extend our thanks to NASSCOM for providing
to an even greater surge in GCC growth in India. platforms such as these awards that serve as a
cornerstone in the development of the GCC model
As a research firm focused exclusively on IT,
and set a strategic direction for the sector to unleash
business process, and engineering services – we
its potential and dominate newer frontiers.
have been supporting clients in making critical,
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Celebrating Excellence
in the GCC ecosystem
The 3rd edition of the NASSCOM GCC Awards in 2021
recognizes and celebrates GCC organizations’ stellar
performance

KEY THEMES

Global business impact

The awards recognize the ingenious
and breakthrough solutions developed
by GCCs to drive competitive
advantage for their global enterprises

Global ownership and

capability leadership
The awards honor GCC organizations
that have advanced broader enterprise
goals through end-to-end service
delivery and outcome ownership
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JURY

Laxmikanth Venkatraman Punit Sood Ajay Prabhu Keshav Murugesh

Managing Director, Head of India, President - Technology Group CEO,
Broadridge NatWest Group Services, QuEST Global WNS Global Services

Ramkumar Narayanan Nitin Seth Sangeeta Gupta Lene Hylling Axelsson

VP Technology & Managing Chief Executive Officer, Senior Vice President, Corporate Vice President
Director, VMware Incedo Inc. NASSCOM and Managing Director,
GBS, Novo Nordisk

Srini Krish Pankajam Sridevi Mahesh Sogal Vasanthi Srinivasan

President, Global Services, Managing Director, Vice President, IT Professor – Organizational
Fiserv Commonwealth Bank of Transformation and Behavior and HRM, IIM
Australia International Technology, Bangalore
Delta

Meena Nagraj IAS Ritesh Talapatra Eric Simonson

MD KITS,K-Tech, Department Managing Director, India, Managing Partner,
of Electronics, IT & Bt, Optum Research, Everest Group
Government of Karnataka
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Award categories

1 Innovation Excellence
Recognizing GCCs that have driven successful
innovation initiatives, enabled by people, process,
technology and culture, and demonstrated business
impact for their global enterprises.

2 Impactful GCC Driven Collaboration

Recognizing GCCs that have demonstrated excellence in
driving external ecosystem collaboration at a global level –
including collaboration with technology partners, startups,
product vendors, service providers, and more.

3 Excelling During the Crisis

Recognizing GCCs that have demonstrated the ability
to adapt and rapidly respond to the 2020 business
disruption while at the same time driving enhanced
support to their global enterprises and end-customers.

4 Excellence in Building Talent of the Future

Recognizing GCCs that have implemented effective talent
management practices to proactively build a future-ready
workforce, especially initiatives that improve diversity,
enhance employer branding, develop leaders, and drive
technology adoption across talent initiatives.

5 Exemplary Value-add
Recognizing GCCs that have demonstrated ownership and
success in driving strategic initiatives for their global
enterprises such as building new capabilities, enhancing
the product portfolio, and improving customer experience.
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Innovation
Excellence category
Over the years, GCCs have evolved significantly in their
innovation journeys and are now leading enterprise-wide efforts
to develop future-ready solutions. Today, several best-in-class
GCCs are building on their process domain understanding and
technology knowledge to enable competitive advantage for their
global organizations – a clear shift beyond cost and operational
impact focus.
Along this journey, these GCCs are also bringing about a
mindset shift within their organizations – a cultural shift that
promotes and celebrates innovation irrespective of the business
or function alignment. This award recognizes GCCs that have
created tangible business benefits in terms of revenue, cost,
efficiency, and time to market through successful product and
process innovations.
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Core differentiators for trailblazers

From a vision and strategic intent perspective, the trailblazers have one common attribute: a well-
structured innovation program that holistically considers elements of people, process, and culture:
 People – creating multi-disciplinary teams, continuously evolving talent practices to promote
innovation, enabling greater cross-functional collaboration
 Process – instituting idea generation mechanisms, ensuring rewards and recognition, refining
governance mechanisms on a regular basis, and implementing fail fast methodologies
 Culture – developing creativity and an innovation-enabling environment, accommodating
failures, rewarding participation and success

Innovation in these organizations is typically driven by dedicated groups with a high degree of
ownership across different life cycle stages. Their innovation approaches also provide clearly laid
out methods to collaboration with their global enterprises and enable innovation beyond processes
to include product and/or business transformation.

In addition to having dedicated teams, these organizations have made targeted, programmatic
decisions to enable more participation among all business teams in innovation initiatives,
promoting an innovation mindset that extends beyond the dedicated innovation group. Many
organizations have recalibrated their talent strategies with an emphasis on hiring specialized
talent, creating experienced leaders to spearhead initiatives, focusing on right-skilling, incentivizing
innovation, and promoting a spirit of intrapreneurship. These organizations use tactics that include:
career growth opportunities such as specialist career paths; differentiated workplace concepts
such as innovation labs, garages, digital pods; and, recognition of highly innovative
employees/teams with non-financial awards including giving employees ownership over their
innovation ideas. For instance, a retail organization’s GCC regularly conducts a program to
develop intrapreneurs and creates the innovation-focused team from existing business teams. This
program, which is both structured and flexible, provides employees opportunities to convert ideas
into proofs-of-concept and then into potential solutions, as well as to leverage new skills.

The GCC operating model has been key to building sustainable innovation programs. These
trailblazer GCCs, in their innovation journeys, have proactively upgraded their operating models to
create greater asset leverage across people, process, and technology, such as moving into a
federated structure for larger organizations. These changes have enabled the GCCs to scale
initiatives faster, ramp up teams, and develop specialization.

On the technology front, these GCCs have a balanced their technology stacks between mature
and niche technologies, with clarity on build vs. buy for specific technologies considering
organizational context. There is also a conscious effort to train and educate business resources on
capabilities and benefits of different technologies, such as the citizen model in automation, and
technology resources on strengthening their business context – gathering deeper domain
understanding of business operations and contextualizing solutions accordingly.

In addition to building in-house teams and capabilities, GCC trailblazers partner with the external
ecosystem such as startups for solutioning, leading relationships at a strategic level rather than on
a project/need basis. GCC innovation teams manage external partners and take a structured
approach to collaborations, such as accelerator programs for startups.
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Another key aspect that sets best-in-class GCCs apart is their focus on developing solutions for the
global enterprise, not only for the GCC. For instance, a global banking firm’s GCC developed a new
AI/ML-based solution for ATM cash forecasting that helped reduce lead time to replenish from 36
hours to 15 minutes, saving $1 million annually. This shift from addressing cost/operational
efficiency-level improvements to solving business needs that impact end customers has, in turn,
helped elevate these GCCs’ value propositions and positioning across the global enterprise.

“I was super impressed with innovation leadership demonstrated here. GCCs have
gone way beyond competency and centers of excellence to innovation in business
model and business excellence, impacting top-line growth and business strategy.”
– Ajay Prabhu, President, Technology Services, QuEST Global

“The level of innovation and impact from the nominated companies was great
to see and made the judging all the more difficult. The Indian GCC ecosystem
is poised for high global impact for not only their organizations but also for their
customers. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners for standing
distinct from a such a set of stellar companies. Well done!”
– Ramkumar Narayanan, VP Technology & Managing Director, Vmware

“It was a real pleasure for me to be a jury member of the NASSCOM GCC
Innovation Excellence Awards. As a founding member of the GCC Council 10 years
back, I was so happy to see the progress GCCs are making and the vision we had
set many years back of GCCs being a source of breakthrough innovation become a
reality. What was striking for me was the variety of GCCs that we now have, the
depth of their innovation efforts, and how some of the younger GCCs are
leapfrogging on the maturity curve. Many congratulations to the GCC community
and the NASSCOM team for this splendid progress. Upwards and onwards!”
– Nitin Seth, Chief Executive Officer, Incedo Inc.
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Innovation
Excellence category

WINNERS
Shortlists
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Innovation
Excellence category
Broadridge Financial Solutions (India) Private Limited

Leveraging Next-gen Technology in Capital Markets –

Turn Tech Disruption into Opportunity
Broadridge helps clients leverage next-gen technology through its ABCDs of Innovation®. Broadridge India
has been leading, driving, and executing A: artificial intelligence and B: blockchain strategy through its
COEs with remarkable success, launching three new revenue-generating, industry-first solutions and
achieving $7 million in revenues, the first blockchain patent for Broadridge, and multiple industry awards.
Broadridge India is at the forefront of innovation leadership at Broadridge, having set up the AI COE in 2012
and the blockchain COE in 2016. Broadridge India has end-to end technology ownership of
blockchain and intelligent automation solutions. It actively participates in strategy formulation,
partnerships, industry relations and client engagement; Broadridge India Managing Director VLK is part of
Broadridge’s global AI & Blockchain Steer-co. Broadridge India COE members have had the privilege of
being digital asset client advisory board members, Hyperledger technology ambassadors, and contributors
to Enterprise Ethereum.
Broadridge India helped Broadridge launch three new industry-first DLT solutions over the last 12
months. Our first DLT solution, Shareholder Disclosure Hub, helps global custodians and financial
intermediaries meet SRD 2 regulations; we have onboarded 80+ clients in the last year. We also have
launched a transformative DL Repo solution for short-term funding needs in fixed income markets; we are
processing $35 billion daily in notional value trades and count large, tier-1 banks as clients. Our third DLT
solution, Private Market Hub Solution, helps private equity funds manage their lifecycles; it has one of the
largest fund administrators as an anchor client.
Our intelligent automaton solution has generated a 30% FTE savings in multiple managed services
departments within Broadridge. Broadridge India also helped develop an AI-based corporate bond
trading business for Broadridge. Broadridge India Innovation COE is continuing to lead Broadridge’s
Horizon 3 strategic initiatives with our focus on expanding Broadridge’s DLT footprint and venture into new
business opportunities for Broadridge including digital assets and crypto.

“Broadridge is committed to driving the innovation roadmap by simplifying the complex.

We call this the ABCDs of Innovation. Broadridge is well positioned to do that for three
reasons: one, we have the scale; two, we have the existing relationships and the
networks; and three, we have deep financial services expertise.”
– Laxmikanth Venkatraman, Managing Director – Broadridge Financial Solutions India Pvt Ltd.

“Investing in transformative technologies including AI and blockchain

very early on, developing in-house talent, and taking multiple solutions
from a white-board concept to revenue-generating products has been a
deeply enriching experience for the Broadridge India Innovation COE.”
– Kishore Seshagiri, Executive Vice President – Strategic Initiatives and
Innovation, Broadridge Financial Solutions India Pvt. Ltd.
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Innovation
Excellence category
HSBC Software Development India Pvt. Ltd.
(HSBC Technology India)

Cybersecurity Testing Automation Helps Crunch Time to Deploy

To deliver digital products and solutions to our customers at pace, while at the same time ensuring robust
security, it is imperative to make innovation an intrinsic part of how we work. Innovation has been a key
pillar of our massive transformation projects through 2016-17, which focused on agility and modern
technologies, and thus increased our release frequency by orders of magnitude – monthly and quarterly
became weekly and daily. To further surpass this improvement, we constantly look for areas in the
Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) that could be shortened further and automated, and one such area
was cybersecurity assessment and remediation.
Traditionally, cybersecurity clearance for any new application has been largely manual and done toward the
end of the SDLC, where the cost of fixing any defects is significantly high. The cybersecurity testing tools
used by the cybersecurity specialists were generally not available to developers, thus leading to wait times in
identifying issues and for remediation. The solution came in the form of Rocket Launcher, a self-service
multi-dimensional scanning platform that integrates all scanning tools across technologies and
provides a 360-degree cybersecurity production readiness view. Multi-dimensional security covers
most aspects of security – code security (static), open source security, run time simulations (dynamic),
infrastructure security, and mobile app security.
Through this tool we are empowering developers to assess the security of their code in a single
click (“secure in a click”). Developers can simply pass their code through Rocket Launcher to identify
vulnerabilities and also instantly view fixes suggested by the tool. These suggestions are based on pre-
programmed fixes and machine learning. Combined with the any-time availability of vulnerability
assessment without dependency on cybersecurity teams, it significantly speeds the cybersecurity testing
and remediation process. Teams that are using Rocket Launcher are seeing time taken for security testing
decline from 4 weeks to just 15 minutes. The remediation time has dropped from an average of 3 days to
just 15 minutes, thanks to the tips on fixes that Rocket Launcher provides. Thus far, production
deployment costs have declined by $5 million in areas where the tool is being used.
Innovation is an omnipresent, perpetual force at HSBC Technology and is part of how every team and
individual – across departments – approaches problems.

“Enhancing developer experience is a “Speed and security are often

key focus area for us. That, in turn, thought of as competing priorities.
allows our developers to innovate even We decided to do something about it,
more on the customer-facing products and the result is Rocket Launcher, an
and services they build.” on-demand, multi-dimensional single
– Pradeep Menon, Managing Director – click tool for holistic cybersecurity
HSBC Technology India, and CIO – Group scanning that produces an
Data Technology, HSBC assessment in just minutes.”
– Rajeev Mahajan, Global Head -
DevOps Engineering, HSBC
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Innovation
Excellence category
PepsiCo Global Business Services India

Sustainable Agriculture Through Innovation

Innovation Happens Here. Living true to this tagline, PepsiCo Hyderabad has established itself as the
innovation center of PepsiCo and partnered in multiple innovation solutions contributing to PepsiCo’s Positive
Agriculture vision.
PepsiCo Positive Agriculture is about the way we create value by operating within planetary boundaries and
inspiring positive change for the planet and people in the global food system. This initiative encompasses
sustainable sourcing of all key ingredients, including not only our grower sourced crops but also key crops
from third parties. With regenerative agricultural practices spreading across seven million acres, these efforts
will lead to an estimated net reduction of three million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and create positive
impact for more than 250,000 families in our agricultural supply chain and communities globally by 2030.
Smart Agro & Precision Agriculture are the building blocks of the PepsiCo Positive Agriculture vision. The
goal of the Smart Agro solution is enhancing sustainable yield of potatoes and reducing storage and
production wastage by digitizing contract farming, creating a mobility solution for agronomist and farmers,
monitoring cold storage, integrating production planning, and using advanced analytics. Advancing our agro
value chain digitalization journey, the roadmap is to roll out our Precision Agriculture solution, the goal of
which is to unlock potato yields by leveraging cutting-edge technologies including IOT-based sensors – for
soil parameters as well as micro and macro weather parameters monitoring – and predictive analytics. The
solution is already adopted in India, Thailand, ANZ, South Africa, and Egypt, and is realizing business benefits.
Key benefits realized include:
 Quicker system-based processes for farmer selection and contract management (about a 42%
improvement in contract management KPIs)
 Effective planning of field visits with seamless farms tracking and clinical crop lifecycle management.
 Real-time farm data and insights available to agronomists and farmers, resulting in timely and controlled
actions (about a 29% improvement in farm management KPIs)
 Considerable reduction in cold storage potato wastage by monitoring key parameters like temperature
and humidity
 100% accuracy in potatoes availability at shop floor as per production plan and faster turnaround of
payment to farmers

“PepsiCo Global Business Services “At PepsiCo Global Business Services India,
India is delivering value to the innovation is a mindset that is fostered
business and fueling PepsiCo’s through a culture that promotes disruptive
growth through innovation, continuous thinking and continuous improvement to find
improvement, and collaboration. Agro solutions for business problems and increase
digitalization is a significant step efficiencies. There are various ideation and
towards powering PepsiCo’s vision of prototype platforms for employees which
accelerating regenerative agriculture provide global exposure to new ideas, and
thus contributing to the global the tools and resources to scale the ideas
sustainability goals.” and bring them to life.”
– Priyaranjan Jha, Managing Director, – Saravan Chellamuthu, Vice President, IT
PepsiCo Global Business Services India
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Innovation
Excellence category
Siemens Technology and Services Private Limited

IoT and Edge Computing

Digitalization has given us innumerable IoT use cases to make the world smarter, more efficient, and
sustainable. However, the lack of availability of common and modular IoT gateway platforms continues to
challenge the seamless interoperability, transparency, and predictive maintenance of heterogenous IoT and
edge devices. The challenge is to leverage technologies such as IoT and edge computing to address the
crucial customer pain points, smart building, and smart grids domains while meeting customer expectations
for reduced impact on top-line growth. Customer pain points include risk of unplanned shutdown, safety
incidents of critical assets, and cyclic preventive maintenance. The case study offers a holistic view of
Siemens Advanta Development India’s solutions for edge-level programming in varied IoT gateways. Our
solutions aim to standardize industrial asset digital twin development while ensuring scalable and
customizable IoT building blocks for faster, safer, and more efficient predictive maintenance in smart
building and smart grid domains. For instance, our NX Power Monitor is a digital caretaker of IoT assets
regardless of their location. It offers asset monitoring with greater transparency for customers of IoT and
edge computing technologies. The cloud-based NX Power Monitor has made new inroads into the
digitalization business with significant revenue generation. In addition to the NX Power Monitor, Siemens
Advanta India’s Edge Digital Services have proven competence in remote fleet and equipment
management. The implementation of both these solutions is GCC owned, while commercialization
rests with Siemens units and divisions. Both solutions are also adaptable to various security
requirements across industrial domains.

“We are passionate about applying our technology and domain know-how to create
innovative solutions to solve real-world problems. Our focus is on creating a culture of
entrepreneurship coupled with targeted efforts toward driving and realizing innovation
that is tied to customer needs and business value has led to significant innovations
across all the verticals in Siemens.”
– Pankaj Vyas, CEO and Managing Director, Siemens Technology and Services Private Limited

“Siemens thrives on innovation. We focus on innovation by design and do not

depend on serendipity. A multi-modal approach to innovation, where the
leadership actively works on removing impediments to create an environment
conducive to innovation. A number of innovative practices, solutions, and
patents have come out of our GCC – both for global and local markets – which
are testimonials to this vibrant innovation ecosystem and our bright engineers.”
– Chethan Seegehalli, Head, Digitalization and Technology Solutions, Siemens
Technology and Services Private Limited
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Innovation
Excellence category
Target Corporation India Pvt. Ltd.

Enhancing the Guest Experience Lifecycle through Vision Computing

2020 put Target’s purpose of “helping all families discover the joy of everyday life” to the test. We had to
adapt to a shift in shopping patterns almost overnight. The challenges were multifold. We had to optimize
safety best practices and continue to provide exceptional guest experiences, while minimizing person-to-
person contact. These changes had to be deployed at the scale at which Target operates – more than
1,900 stores with a product assortment of thousands of items, spread across 50 states in the US. And we
had to do this while solving for everyday industry challenges like out-of-stock, inventory management,
delivery, driving affordability, and ensuring a great shopping experience. It’s a deeply connected, complex
system of people, processes and technology coming together to deliver joy to our guests (which is what we
call our customers).
Teams from Target in India took the lead on finding and developing solutions, despite being nearly
8,000 miles away from our stores and guests. For example, the teams applied Artificial Intelligence (AI),
engineering, and Machine Learning (ML)-based data and analytics tools to existing store technology to
ensure that the in-store number of guests adhered to the federal guidelines around the pandemic. The
versatility of the solution also enabled store team members to apply the same technology to help prevent
inventory shortages on the shelf and increase traceability of store items. The solution uses multiple IoT
signals from vision technology and RFID to ensure the right barcodes are on the right items and there are
minimal errors when scanning products. The innovation reduces false positives with real-time sensing,
processing, and alerting mechanisms. Tests run with the solution to date have shown 95% accuracy in
identifying shortages. The teams are continuing to find extensive ways to harness the solutions to solve
some of retail’s leading problems and continue delivering joy to our guests during the pandemic.

“Target in India is a fully integrated extension of Target’s HQ

in our purpose and the work we drive. Our investments in
leadership, capabilities, co-location synergies, and learning
initiatives have helped us continue innovating and advancing
retail for millions of shoppers each week.”
– Bruce Starnes III, SVP & President, Target in India

“Our deep investments in vision computing skills are

enabling us with unique ways to help improve and expand
our decision making and optimize our business – particularly
around forecasting, inventory, regenerative future, and
supply chain. It’s already helping us solve for critical retail
problems and service our guests in superior ways.”
– Sanjay Kharb, VP, Infrastructure, Target in India
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Innovation
Excellence category
Verizon India

5G Home Service Qualification

The practice of technicians visiting homes to check the quality and strength of 5G Home connectivity before
providing network connection to consumers has been replaced by service qualification software as part of the
network planning platform. Developing software while bearing in mind Ultra Wide Band (UWB) characteristics
and determining whether a specific customer qualifies for Verizon 5G Home service was challenging. While
service qualification based on a neighborhood or an area is still quite niche, service qualification of a unit in a
community by assessing the coverage along the boundary of a specific customer unit, for which the 5G Home
service is to be enabled, was the key focus. The objectives were to minimize false positives, sharpen
accuracy, and reduce the need for technician home visits or interaction.
Verizon India played a pivotal role in building the end-to-end solution by leveraging cutting-edge
emerging technologies such as geospatial analytics, AI/ML-based image processing techniques, and
process improvements like the recalibration of coverage models. The use of these techniques was
fueled by strong collaboration across the business units, Centers of Excellence (COEs), and external partners
to drive the Verizon 5G Home strategy: "We move the world forward together by enabling 5G." Best-in-class
technologies coupled with a robust in-house innovation framework created a pathway to achieve this need-of-
the-hour solution that not only brought customer delight but also helped in building business value.
The innovative solution enables real-time service qualification for 5G home service as opposed to the
manual process. This capability helps Verizon to be future-ready to meet the anticipated demand, improve
speed-to-market in 5G Home service adoption, improve accuracy of service qualification, reduce truck rolls to
customer locations, identify qualified addresses to be targeted to increase sales, and – as an added
advantage – of reduce customer home visits during the pandemic.

“We imbibe, encourage, and foster innovation at Verizon,

be it toward our customers, our colleagues, or our business
partners. Innovation helps us drive performance excellence,
which is one of our core values.”
– Vijayaraman Subramanian, VP & MD, Verizon India

“At Verizon, innovation is BAU. Our technology teams are

engaged with the business, partners, and stakeholders
each day to create solutions that provide a great
experience to our internal as well as external users.”
– Sireesh Mutharaju, Associate Director-Software
Development, Verizon India
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Impactful GCC Driven

Collaboration category
This award recognizes GCCs that have demonstrated excellence in
driving external ecosystem collaboration at a global level – including
collaboration with startups, technology product vendors, service
providers, academic institutions, and more.
Over the years, several GCCs have built and strengthened their
relationships with external ecosystem partners such as third-party
service providers, startups, academic institutions, and industry bodies.
Some driving needs for this move include:
 Enhancing end customer experience – accelerating time-to-market,
expanding into new geographies / accessing new global markets,
providing more business value to clients
 Developing new products or solutions – accessing next-generation
technology platforms, conducting R&D on niche/next-generation
technologies, accessing customized/local products/services
 Addressing talent needs – accessing high-quality talent / niche skills,
training existing resources on niche services, fostering a culture of
innovation, strengthening GCC branding
 Other factors – driving efficiencies, low-cost and disruptive innovation,
out-of-the-box thinking, etc.
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NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Core differentiators for trailblazers

From a vision and broader strategy perspective, these GCCs have demonstrated clarity on the build vs.
buy approach that includes a structured evaluation process of requirements that may be satisfied by the
external ecosystem and selective engagement with external entities for specific solutions, products, or
capabilities. They also follow a programmatic approach for the engagement. For example, a leading
banking GCC engages with startups through a dedicated accelerator program that covers aspects such
as mentoring programs, governance, IP ownership, and nature of engagement. The GCC also engages
with academic institutions in a structured manner – sponsoring research, curating academic courses
covering specific skill sets such as advanced analytics, and engaging with the student community for
solution development. These collaboration programs clearly spell out the benefits – not only for the
partners but also for the end customers – ensuring that service line leaders are invested, which is
important for a continued and successful engagement.

These GCCs have demonstrated ownership of, and accountability for, delivering outcomes associated
with these external relationships. For instance, with startups, the GCC:
 Identifies and shortlists startups for the parent organization based on multiple criteria such as
solution/offering, track record, and fit with the enterprise’s innovation agenda
 Engages with shortlist startups for a dedicated period of three to six months
 Offers infrastructure, technology/financial support and mentorship to startups, and allows
experimentation with future technologies and the introduction of disruptive innovation
 Manages and governs the entire solutioning process and ensures seamless deployment of solutions
with the current operating environment

Trailblazers track progress and outcomes. They have well established practices for articulating/
quantifying the business impact of a successful engagement, including ongoing tracking of key
performance indicators such as SLAs for third-party service providers, and success rates for solutions
developed by startups or academic partnerships.

One additional key attribute that sets these GCCs apart is their focus on addressing direct end-customer
requirements. For instance, a leading life sciences GCC has partnered with startups to address key
aspects of cancer diagnosis and early detection enablement. This shift from engaging with the external
ecosystem to address internal talent/solution needs to addressing real-world problems truly sets these
trailblazers apart.

“Refreshing to read about all the different approaches – I felt like a student more than
a judge. I got a lot out of being on the panel. Congrats to all the finalists.”
– Srini Krish, President, Global Services, Fiserv
 20
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

“Every nominee is a winner because of representation of the quality of programs from

India. GCCs are taking the lead in transformation. For me personally, it was a
learning experience as I read through the case studies and felt pride at the progress
of talent build in our country.”
– Pankajam Sridevi, Managing Director, Commonwealth Bank of Australia

“All the nominations for the Impactful GCC Driven Collaboration category were
strong. The selected entries highlight the criticality of a robust and sustainable
model for a GCC to engage with the external ecosystem – startups, academia,
industry, and more. Organizations that build a strong network of partners will
progress faster.”
– Punit Sood, Head of India, NatWest Group
 21
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Impactful GCC Driven

Collaboration category

WINNERS
Shortlists
 22
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Impactful GCC Driven

Collaboration category
AstraZeneca India Private Limited

Transforming Patient Lives Through Innovation and External Ecosystem

Collaboration
At AstraZeneca, we put patients at the center of everything we do and are deeply committed to improving patient
experiences and outcomes. We realize that to achieve this, collaboration is key to unlock the power of innovation
and transforming healthcare delivery. This collaborative mindset, augmented by our technology footprint in our
India GCC, is the key driver of the transformation.
India is a key node of the Catalyst Network – an interconnected global network of 20+ innovation hubs
(physical and virtual partnership). There are four dimensions to this collaboration framework: Cross Border
Partnership, Academia Collaboration, Government & Industry Partnership and Nurturing Start-up ecosystem.
The India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre is a collaboration between the Swedish Trade commissioner’s
office, AIIMS Delhi, and AIIMS Jodhpur. This initiative is supported by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare,
ICMR, Start-up India, agnii, Invest India, Atal Innovation Mission, and NASSCOM. The objective is to help provide
affordable and accessible healthcare for all by nurturing an innovation ecosystem.
In terms of the academia partnership and nurturing a startup ecosystem, our strategic collaboration with IIT
Madras serves as a platform to co-create by bringing together the industry-academia expertise. This platform
nurtures the best ideas from budding innovators – academia and early-stage startups – by providing them with an
opportunity to develop and deliver the products. This support also includes strong mentorship support leveraging
our global presence and domain thought leadership.
In terms of immediate outcomes of these initiatives, 14 startups were selected and incubated through the India-
Sweden Healthcare innovation. Predible and Qure.ai solutions, identified through these initiatives, are set to roll
out across 30 global sites. These solutions will showcase the strength of Indian startups and the credibility of
external ecosystem partnerships. In the nascent startup space, we are actively mentoring a startup focused on
developing a breathalyzer for breast cancer screening.
In summary, this pathbreaking innovation framework will put us at the very center of interaction among
patients, medicine, technology, healthcare professionals and policy makers, as we work with our partners
to improve patient outcomes through whole disease solutions and deliver more meaningful patient experiences.

“The GCC played a key role in integrating the healthcare innovation ambition of
AstraZeneca globally with the vibrant startup, academic and institutional ecosystem
in India to identify, incubate, and globally scale cutting-edge ideas, products, and
solutions that will transform outcomes for patients around the world.”
– Siva Padmanabhan, MD, AstraZeneca India Private Limited

“This is an attempt to harness technology-enabled, borderless collaboration to

reimagine patient outcomes – a transition from local optimization into value
creation through global synergies across the healthcare ecosystem.”
– Sajit Kumar, Director – Commercial IT, AstraZeneca India Private Limited
 23
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Impactful GCC Driven

Collaboration category
KASS – Kmart Group Australia

Delivering Customer Experience in Stores During the Pandemic by

Implementing Mobile PoS Systems
One of the strategic pillars of the Accelerator function is to co-innovate with startups. In April 2020, the
pandemic struck, and social distancing became the norm worldwide, creating the need for a mobile Point of
Sale (PoS) solution to reduce crowding at checkout counters in stores. Establishing the PoS included the
following requirements: it had to be deployed across stores before the 2020 holiday season (December
2020 go-live); deployment had to be easy and remote; the solution had to be cost effective; the solution
needed a quick pilot versus a standard six-month cohort model; it had to integrate with internal systems,
Desktop PoS, payment gateways, ERP, etc.; given the size and breadth of the change, it should align with
long-term strategic goals, including increase customer engagement time (vs. checkout time), a
personalized shopping experience, and digital receipts.
The Technology Accelerator team identified and curated a Bangalore-based retail tech start up and
program and managed a pilot before handing it over to the business / operations. The Accelerator
spearheaded the pilot end-to-end: April 2020 – identified the need for a mobile PoS solution; May 2020 –
evaluated multiple solutions from large players and also from startups from across the world; June 2020 –
finalized the solution from a Bangalore-based start up with unique selling points follows: the ability to deploy
quickly, at scale, with a mature solution, founder comfort, credibility, reasonable cost, and tech flexibility;
July through September 2020 – pilot phase – the pilot was complex due to integrations with third parties
including banks, payment gateways, mobile PoS hardware, and Kmart internal systems; October 2020 –
live trial in five Kmart stores after which we fixed initial hiccups; December 2020 – live across Kmart stores
in Australia and New Zealand before holidays.
The collaboration with the startup delivered immediate impact, including these key outcomes: AU$
3 million in transactions and 100,000 transactions in the first few days; reduced cart drop at the
checkout counter during the holidays; apparent increase in customer time spent in the shopping zone vs. at
checkout counters; strong credibility of our Accelerator capability within Kmart Group; possible exploration
of leveraging the mobile PoS for digital receipts, personalization, and customer engagement; encouraging
testimonials from customers and stakeholders.

“The Accelerator function is an integral capability of our GCC. Through its

various ecosystem collaborations, we are able to position our GCC as a talent
brand of choice, identify and adopt various solutions from startups, and – most
importantly – educate and inspire our leaders on global industry insights.”
– Vineet Mehta, Head – Data & Analytics, Co-lead – India GCC

“Having started the Accelerator function during COVID, and hence

being unable to meet leaders and visit national office/stores, we have
just touched the tip of the iceberg of possibilities of the ecosystem
driven collaborations with our Accelerator. Exciting times await ahead.”
– Saravana Mani, Head – Technology Accelerator
 24
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Impactful GCC Driven

Collaboration category
Samsung R&D Institute India - Bangalore (SRI-B)

Three Pillars of Strategic Collaboration

Samsung R&D Institute India – Bangalore (SRI-B) has undergone a sea change in innovation activities
over the last 10 years, ever since the CTO group was established under new leadership. At an
organizational level, there has been a key focus on make-vs.-buy decisions, which fueled both in-house
innovation and open innovation. In-house innovation encompasses core aspects of building stable
platforms and value-adding solutions with more long-term strategic benefits for the organization. The open
innovation charter is built around leveraging solutions from the external ecosystem to fulfill any gap in
internal solutions. SRI-B, as GCC, has initiated three streams of collaborations for open innovation:
Product success via SRI-B’s collaborations with vendors: In wireless communications, SRI-B has
been engaging with network operators globally and in India for 4G/5G network deployment. To promote
inter-operability in smart cities and smart homes, SRI-B has collaborated with TSDSI and OCF India.
The collaboration has demonstrated new business possibilities when smart homes are integrated with
smart cities.
SRI-B’s strategic collaborations with startups: SRI-B is deeply connected with the India startup
ecosystem for strategic partnerships based on market needs and internal technology requirements, such
as the Indus OS regional language app store providing ML-based app and content recommendations in
the Samsung Galaxy App Store. Samsung is also a strategic investor in a dozen startups in AI and IoT,
consumer commerce and content and services. Sample recent investments include Swiggy, Gnani.ai,
and Railyatri.
SRI-B’s collaborations with academic institutions: In the past six years, SRI-B has established more
than 20 research collaborations with universities / research institutes in India and abroad. Collaboration
topics encompass all of Samsung India’s CoE areas. For example, IIT Patna developed a natural language
generation (NLG) system customized for the users in Samsung’s Bixby solution. A visiting research
program has also been established for top Indian and international universities.

“SRI-B has developed multiple impactful innovations over the last 25 years.
This success can be attributed to the collaborations with cross-functional
teams from within and beyond, converging to draw insights and find solutions
for our consumers. As part of our Powering Digital India vision, we will create
breakthrough innovations through our Centers of Excellence (CoEs).”
– Dipesh Shah, MD, SRI-B

“Over the last decade, alongside our in-house innovation, we have

built a strong culture of open innovation. Whether it is collaborative
work with technology vendors, strategic partnerships with startups, or
research collaborations with universities, Samsung plays a pivotal role
in India ecosystem and beyond.”
– Dr. Aloknath De, CTO, SRI-B
 25
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Impactful GCC Driven

Collaboration category
Walmart Global Tech India

Maturing the Google Cloud for Hybrid Cloud Readiness

Walmart enterprise data is huge, diverse, and spread across legacy systems like on-premises Hadoop,
IBM Mainframe, and Informix. It was a huge challenge as most of the cloud providers were not ready with
Hybrid cloud features to support seamless data migration between on-premises and cloud. Walmart Global
Tech executed a hybrid cloud strategy by leading external collaboration with Product and Technology
vendors (Google, IBM, Confluent, and Nvidia) to co-develop features and capabilities, service providers
(Deloitte, Infosys, and TCS) for staffing contingent workforce to run the legacy systems, and the open-
source community to build solutions that were not available, such as a data lineage solution.
With the hybrid cloud migration strategy, Walmart Global Tech executed cloud migration at petabytes scale.
The flexibility of cloud capacity was effectively leveraged for peak workloads (spikes in transactions from
in-store purchases and eCommerce orders) during the 2020 holiday season. We achieved a significant
improvement in run time to prepare the insights dashboard / analytical reports from 60-90 minutes to 10-14
minutes. Partnering with Confluent on real-time data acquisition to cloud has improved data freshness and data
consumption from a few hours to seconds. Partnering with Nvidia helped to accelerate Graphics Processing
Unit (GPU) adoption to enhance the GPU library / Software Development Kit (SDK) for data science and
Machine Learning (ML) use cases, which helped to make performance 36 times faster and improve cost by 32
times. These are only a few of many examples.
The entire effort also helped to accelerate key product launches around the omnichannel
shopping experience, online groceries, same-day pick up during COVID, resulting in a 70% increase in
eCommerce sales. The other important outcome was in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) for Identity
and access management framework, Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) compliance, auditing capability, and
regulatory compliance, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) requirements.
Walmart Global Tech has fostered strong external collaboration with the partners listed above to build new
capabilities and leverage existing capabilities, resulting in a hybrid cloud approach for enterprise data on the
cloud at scale. This transition involved huge effort to design, develop and optimize features to scale
for petabytes of data.

“At Walmart Global Tech India, we have a strong focus on building impactful tech solutions that
are helping us to reimagine the way we deliver value to our customers. Our teams seamlessly
collaborated across locations (the US and India) for our cloud journey, which is our tech
modernization initiative and a strong catalyst for our innovation charter. This project is a successful
outcome of our collaboration creativity and tech expertise that have helped to bring technology to the
forefront and transform customer experiences. I am grateful to our talented teams for this milestone!”
– Hari Vasudev, SVP and Country Head, Walmart Global Tech India

“Our cloud journey is an exciting tech modernization initiative we’ve been leading for two years
now. Across the US and India, our teams collaborated seamlessly along with various partners to
scale up this initiative and build upon our tech capability. I am thankful for the immense hard work,
valuable contributions, and out-of-the-box thinking shown by the teams. The cloud strategy is
integral to powering our tech transformation to unlock value for our customers.”
– Sreejith Gopinath, Senior Director - Data Engineering, Walmart Global Tech India
 26
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excelling
During the Crisis category
This award recognizes GCCs that have demonstrated the ability to
adapt and respond rapidly to the COVID-19-induced business and
work model disruptions, providing exceptional support to their global
organizations and customers through innovative solutions support,
while also caring for employee wellbeing and the community at large.
In many ways, 2020 was the year of GCCs – resilient, recognized, and
renewed. There were several new GCC setups in India in 2020, as
well as increased scale in existing centers. At the same time, many
GCCs were entrusted with greater responsibility as well – balancing
disruptions in global services at other locations, increasing
participation in sourcing decisions, widening the portfolios, moving up
the value chain, deepening niche skills, accelerating transformation
initiatives, increasing focus on revenue-impact/business goals, and
more. Many GCCs successfully navigated the crisis and used it as an
opportunity to step up and deliver high value-add for their global
enterprises. The did all of this, of course, in addition to addressing
immediate employee requirements – enabling a smooth transition to
work from home, providing infrastructure support, extending healthcare
benefits to employees and their families.
 27
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Core differentiators for trailblazers

GCC trailblazers have exemplified the adage “never let a good crisis go to waste” and have led from
the front in business and service recovery initiatives. Best-in-class GCCs have not only navigated
through the crisis but have also emerged as true differentiators for their global organizations. From
ensuring smooth transitions to remote delivery models, to supporting new business requirements
and entities beyond the traditional delivery models, to leading new global initiatives triggered during
the pandemic, these GCCs have strengthened their value propositions as strategic entities helping
their enterprises navigate successfully through the crisis. The increased endorsement from global
leaders in the past year is a testament to the phenomenal role these GCCs play.
Pre-pandemic readiness and the shift to remote work in the first quarter of 2020: Many GCCs
proactively tested BCP and work from home readiness, reassessed business strategies factoring in
the crisis environment, assessed partnership risks, established new standards, and ensured a
seamless transition to remote setup.
Increased ownership in supporting entities outside India: There have been multiple instances of
GCCs creating impact on global business resiliency programs by stepping in to support other global
entities and/or enabling the role of third-party entities. For instance, a US-headquartered retail
organization’s GCC provided infrastructure support to its third-party vendors in India to ensure
business continuity in vendor operations. In addition, these GCCs have absorbed work from other
GCCs and country entities and supported other global teams when they needed help the most.
The biggest differentiator for these trailblazers has been the support they provided to their global
enterprises to navigate new and emerging business requirements:
 India GCCs successfully demonstrated the ability to support new business requirements, such as
banks’ GCCs building new systems to support local governments’ fiscal stimulus plans, and retail
organizations’ GCCs building newer models to better forecast inventory and sales and provide
enhanced customer support
 Many GCCs revisited their existing operating models and deployed agile, cross-functional teams
to support emerging business requirements. For instance, a consumer goods organization’s
GCC had business and technology teams collaborate to develop new analytical models to better
predict their inventory requirements considering global supply chain disruptions
 Some GCCs have used this opportunity to reimagine existing systems, such as order-to-cash
processes, and have transformed businesses entirely
 Healthcare and life sciences GCCs have helped to create medical devices and solutions, done
R&D for life-saving medicines, and coordinated crisis response across communities around
the globe
 28
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

“GCCs in the country continue to catalyze business transformation, ably supported by

their innovative rigor, digital-only mindsets, and future-ready talent. It has been an
absolute privilege to witness first-hand the stellar work being done by GCCs by
pushing the frontiers of people, processes, and disruptive technologies. As India
continues to grow as the global hub for GCCs, I am confident that they will stay on
track to unlock sustained value for their parent companies through constant re-
invention, adaptive operating models, and greater resilience.”
– Keshav Murugesh, Group CEO, WNS Global Services

“It was amazing to read the case studies from GCCs for the category of Excelling During
the Crisis. While the examples of how GCCs supported their employees was exemplary
and known, what was amazing was how they focused on innovation and business
transformation during this period and helped their global enterprises and their customers
with new products and solutions. Kudos to all the GCCs that submitted in this category
and congratulations to the winners. Supporting lives and enabling transformation at the
same time is not easy, but these companies have shown it is possible.”
– Sangeeta Gupta, SVP, NASSCOM

“I would like to thank NASSCOM for giving me the opportunity to be part of the jury
panel for GCCs on the impact created on global business resiliency programs. It was
truly inspiring to observe and hear stories of these companies on how they have
stepped up not only in ensuring business continuity and resilience imperatives but
also in supporting other global entities to jointly come out of this pandemic. We look
forward to associating with NASSCOM on such forums and also identify more ways
for government/industry collaboration for the greater good of our ecosystem.”
– Meena Nagraj IAS, MD KITS, K-Tech, Department of Electronics, IT
& Bt, Government of Karnataka
 29
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excelling
During the Crisis category

WINNERS
Shortlists
 30
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excelling
During the Crisis category
AB InBev GCC

Turning Around a Crisis: Cash Work Group

AB InBev GCC started 2020 with an ambitious goal to transform global OTC. As we were building that plan,
the pandemic hit. To manage the resulting financial uncertainties and risks, the GCC took the initiative
and lead to create a global Cash Work Group (CWG) to reduce overdues across the company. We
brought together the GHQ and zone leaders from different functions and established a cross-functional
crisis group – CWG.
Through the leadership of the CWG, the GCC led the below initiatives to reduce overdues globally for
AB InBev:
 Created an OTC toolkit and conducted process benchmarking and gap analyses to develop
recommendations for all zones
 Defined 26 global OTC KPIs and developed a dashboard for accurate and frequent reporting of financial
risks
 Redefined the global credit policy for the post-lockdown reality with data and analytics-driven best
practices across the company
 Defined a 7-lens framework for in-depth understanding and optimization of the OTC operations
The initiative resulted in a reduction of overdues by $350 million and has been recognized by the
CFO’s office. With this initiative, we also had the opportunity to understand AB InBev’s OTC operations
maturity across the globe by gathering inputs as per the OTC best practices toolkit and 7-lens methodology.
This understanding further acted as an input for the global transformation roadmap that we have embarked
upon in 2021-22.

“The GCC took complete ownership of this initiative and

supported multiple global entities, which resulted in real-time
benefit for not just our global businesses, but for our customers
as well. And the cherry on the cake – this is a scalable product!”
– Serge De Vos, Managing Director GCC & Global Operations Head

“In an extremely challenging year, our GCC team took the ownership
to lead the zones to navigate the crisis, reducing our exposure. Cash
Work Group leveraged the crisis as a catalyst for transformation.”
– Ronan Gaeti, Global Director – New Capabilities
 31
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excelling
During the Crisis category
Standard Chartered GBS

How Standard Chartered GBS Used Tools and Insights to Prioritize Staff
Wellbeing During the Crisis
Standard Chartered GBS crisis response anchors around our colleagues. For us, the wellbeing of colleagues is
paramount, and when the pandemic hit the world, the organization left no stone unturned.
Our four-pronged approach – prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery – gave us a head start to
address the challenges. With strong leadership support, our operations, technology, human resources,
governance, and property teams joined hands to ensure seamless delivery.
Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. We were quick in mobilizing our teams and equipped
them with physical and tech infrastructure. In less than 10 days, we deployed SC Connect to over 33,000
colleagues / vendor staff, enabling real-time health and wellness check-ins. We developed a holistic
approach to medical and financial assistance policies, which were personalized to help support colleagues and
their immediate and extended families. The bank provided financial aid, including parental medical support, and
administered 14,000+ vaccination doses to colleagues and family. The bank also created a WFH enablement
fund to support infrastructure requirements at home. Also, as part of our CSR initiatives, we supported an
indigenized, affordable, and portable ventilator prototype developed by IIT, Kanpur.
Our global footprint and unique diversity gave us an advantage. Our presence in other markets helped us
assess the impact and intensity effectively. We provided management and business leaders with weekly
insights on workforce planning (due to impact of COVID-19) that helped teams load balance and ensure 100%
client delivery while keeping colleagues wellbeing at the center. During this time, we shifted our focus from
workforce management to workforce empowerment and published stress indicators that helped our
front-line teams prioritize support. Despite the headwinds of COVID-19, we managed to bring a significant
number of roles to GBS India from Asia, the UK, the US, and the Middle East, indicating support of and
confidence in GBS India to deliver during the pandemic.

“An unwavering focus on clients, colleagues, and business, followed by a four-

pronged approach of prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery helped us at
Standard Chartered Global Business Services serve all our stakeholders during this
challenging phase. Leveraging our learnings from other markets and with technology
at the core, we were able to ensure quick mobilization of services and 100% client
delivery, a great achievement under the circumstances.”
– Matthew Norris, Global Head and CEO, Global Business Services, Standard Chartered

“The new ways of working enabled us to move with agility. We developed and deployed the
SC Connect app in less than 10 days, which allowed our colleagues to check in on their
wellbeing, location, and ability to work. Access to information was key during the crisis, so
we mobilized a squad to provide daily insights to bank’s management and other cross-
functional teams. We also shifted our focus from workforce management to workforce
empowerment and started publishing stress indicators for our front-line teams to prioritize
support. The best practices from our India center were shared with other global locations.”
– Puneet Chhabra, Managing Director, Global Head – Rightshoring, Business Development and
Workforce Empowerment
 32
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excelling
During the Crisis category
Tesco Business Services

Rising to the Challenge – A Resilient Strategy as a Response to the Pandemic

COVID-19, in many ways, has been a litmus test of resilience for businesses globally. As the biggest food
retailer in Europe and the leader in the markets we serve, shutting down our stores or delaying services to
our customers was not an option. Tesco as a business had the privilege and responsibility to feed
nations; this meant Tesco Business Services had to serve Tesco markets in a challenging
environment and at a scale and speed never seen before. Scaling up operations at all Tesco markets,
managing the sudden spike in volumes, and enabling a safe and secure environment for over 4,500+
colleagues in a short period were some of the challenges TBS encountered in the last financial year.
Against these challenges, TBS adapted, evolved, and scaled its resilience strategy to guide and lead
through the COVID -19 crisis. Our teams led from the front by:
 Defining strategic principles to guide the response and align teams to a common goal
 Initiating a daily colleague pulse survey to have first-hand information of colleague challenges and needs
 Adopting an agile approach through frequent review of plans and strategies
 Setting up a SitRep dashboard for leadership decision-making, enabling a 360-degree view of the impact
 Implementing a multidimensional automation approach comprising BOTs and data platforms
 Applying a well-crafted cross-functional resourcing strategy enabled by productivity-monitoring tools
 Maintaining continuous open and transparent communication with colleagues and market stakeholders
 Keeping colleagues at the heart of the overall response through several initiatives supporting four key
themes: work from home enablement, mental wellbeing, financial assistance, and medical support
As a result of the successful execution of the response plan, TBS delivered significant value generation
for the Tesco group, including outcomes such as:
 Moving from onsite to 99.9% offsite/remote operations in less than four weeks
 Hiring 48,000+ new colleagues for the markets to support store operations
 Enabling 1,500+ call agents to work from home with minimal impact on customers
 Redesigning 3,500+ stores to meet new safety protocols in less than four weeks
 Supporting a 50-100% increase in volumes across services
 Driving a 5.6% improvement in customer satisfaction scores

“The enormity of the challenge brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic required us to evolve,
adapt, and respond at a pace never seen before. Amidst this crisis, and with the responsibility to
feed nations, we rallied our resources, set clear leadership priorities, leveraged analytics and
automation, and implemented a resilient response strategy to ensure seamless continuity of
business and wellbeing of our colleagues. Indeed, we never missed a beat throughout this
journey toward excellence.”
– Sumit Mitra, CEO, Tesco Business Services & Tesco Bengaluru

“COVID took the world by surprise, and it has been very hard on all of us! Fortunately, we had a well-
defined and trusted crisis management structure at Tesco, which helped us manage this uncertainty with
relative ease and confidence. We realized the criticality of being agile, flexible, and empathetic, while
taking prompt decisions throughout the pandemic. Our priorities were to focus on the safety and wellbeing
of our colleagues, ensuring business continuity, and extensively supporting our community at large.”
– Sangeetha Dorairaj, Associate Director – Business Assurance, Solution Design & Transition,
Tesco Business Services
 33
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excelling
During the Crisis category
UniOps

Turning the COVID-19 Crisis into an Opportunity for Accelerated

Transformation
UniOps, Unilever’s India GCC, is a strategic enabler of the company’s enterprise strategy and is responsible
for driving operations and transformations across finance, digital, IT infrastructure, employee services, and
customer experience, and serving the business in over 190 global locations. During 2020’s unprecedented
turn with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, UniOps played a pivotal role in managing and mitigating
the impact for our consumers, customers, employees, and the overall Unilever business. UniOps adopted a
multi-pronged strategy centered on a human-first approach and sales and supply.
Resiliency
Our focus on innovation and business centricity along with a well-planned communication strategy enabled us
to transition to resilient ways of working in a very short timeframe.
Human-first approach
UniOps formulated a comprehensive care strategy for its employees and community to manage the employee
well-being experience and create social impact during the difficult times. A significant focus was to maintain
collaboration and connection across employees and UniOps’ complex partner ecosystem to co-create value
for Unilever and its customers. UniOps led multiple initiatives that laid the foundation for energized and
proactive response to the multiple challenges posed by the pandemic. One example was setting up a virtual
command center for all COVID-19-related queries and doctor consultations. To date, close to 900 doctor
consultations and over 500 requests for resources have been addressed through this center.
Sales and supply resiliency
UniOps reviewed potential impact scenarios and created business continuity strategies to sustain global
business operations. UniOps technology and operations prowess came together seamlessly to mitigate the
challenges during the crisis. For instance, a multi-disciplinary UniOps team set up a resilience control tower
for continuous risk monitoring, providing real time visibility into stock and turnover, tracking of shipment
routes, and supply chain lead times. Another example involves UniOps Finance team leading cash
conservation initiatives to free up capital for the business. UniOps turned the pandemic crisis into an
opportunity and accelerated transformation delivering significant value to Unilever.

“Our success in holistically managing the global challenges of the pandemic is a

testament to the collective efforts of UniOps and Unilever teams and emphasizes its
strong culture of collaboration, customer centricity, and people-first approach.”
– Neeraj Lal, VP Commercial Experience and UniOps Center Head

“UniOps played a pivotal role for Unilever to efficiently manage COVID-19

impact. We demonstrated agility and resilience in dealing with this uncertainty
by partnering with global business units and third parties to minimize
operational disruptions during this prolonged pandemic.”
– Gaurav Gupta Head, UniOps Supplier Strategy and Performance
 34
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excellence
in Building Talent of the Future category
Access to future-ready, highly skilled talent is the bedrock of India’s IT-BPM market.
If cost arbitrage brought GCCs to India, the talent proposition has made them stay
and prosper. This award recognizes GCCs that have implemented proactive,
innovative, and effective talent practices to build future-ready workforces and achieve
superior outcomes. The award especially recognizes initiatives that improve diversity,
enhance employer branding, and drive technology adoption across talent initiatives.
India GCCs are increasingly becoming global talent hubs that house deep domain
expertise and next-generation skills. However, it has not been easy for these
organizations, especially with factors such as new digital technologies, rising
consumer expectations, increasing demand for analytics, and rapidly transforming
business models driving the need to recalibrate talent strategies on a regular basis.
Best-in-class GCCs have made a conscious effort to address talent-related
challenges considering a wide array of avenues such as investing in improving brand
perception in the talent market, out-of-the-box talent acquisition methods (such as
hiring from alternative industries, partnering with the external ecosystem, and
acqi-hiring), creating learning cultures, investing in talent, helping the workforce to
continually develop skills, and creating targeted programs to promote diversity, equity,
and inclusion, among others. They are not only leveraging India’s demographic
dividend, but consciously shaping it to build new talent pockets. Investments in talent
initiatives have increased 3-5X in last two years. Talent strategy has become a board
room agenda item and is considered a competitive differentiator for GCCs.
 35
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Core differentiators for trailblazers

An attribute trailblazer GCCs share is they have clearly shifted from addressing GCC-specific
talent needs to future-proofing talent for their global enterprises. Almost all of them aspire to
become strategic global talent hubs for their enterprises, building skills ahead of demand; their
charters are no longer restricted by local GCC needs. The following five key factors differentiate
these GCCs from the rest of the pack.
 Developing global leaders: Leading GCCs redefine GCC leaders’ responsibilities to look
beyond people and delivery management, and build leaders who understand business problems,
are comfortable working with a multi-generation workforce, can effectively deal with ambiguity
and uncertainty, and can build peer-to-peer relationships with global counterparts. Furthermore,
they reduce dependency on incidental leaders and build a strong pipeline of future GCC and
global leaders. A leading professional services firm’s GCC, for example, partners with leading
education institutions to provide executive leadership coaching for emerging leaders in addition
to providing exposure across different business units, work types, etc.
 Programmatic L&D initiatives: Trailblazers have introduced systems to identify future business
needs, map existing GCC inventory, and create roadmaps for skills development including
business/domain, technical, functional, and soft skills. Hyper-personalization of learning
journeys, use of technology for scaled and speedy interventions, and appropriate incentives for
employees are critical success factors. Last, these GCCs are committed to measuring success at
each step and open to proactive course correction
 Diversity and inclusion: Best-in-class GCCs have used Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) both to
improve their positioning as employers of choice and to tap into under-utilized talent pockets,
such as returning-to-work mothers and rural workers. The definition of D&I initiatives has
expanded to become truly holistic and inclusive and create a strong business case for doing
good. Further, ensuring equal benefits and opportunities for all workers is becoming the
cornerstone of these GCCs
 Rigorous performance monitoring and reporting: Most GCCs have focused on inputs rather
than outcomes when it comes talent initiatives, as these initiatives often bear results in the long
term. However, best-in-class GCCs have taken an outcome-oriented approach in which they
measure impact and success of talent initiatives on various strategic, operational, people, and
cost metrics and identify areas for course correction early
 Leverage of next-generation technology tools and platforms: Finding the right balance
between human and technology is critical. Trailblazers have leveraged technology capabilities
within the GCC (especially those GCCs with large tech teams), across the global enterprise
(beyond the GCC), and in the external ecosystem more effectively. More use of technology does
not guarantee success, but – done right – it certainly improves the chances of success, and that
is where trailblazer GCCs stand out
 36
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

“It was a privilege to be jury member and review all the great initiatives installed by
the 12 participating companies. So much better practice for the GCC community.”
– Lene Hylling Axelsson, Corporate Vice President and Managing Director,
GBS, Novo Nordisk

“I enjoyed being on the NASSCOM GCC awards jury panel. As expected, the
scope and diversity of interventions in managing talent that GCCs have embarked
on is commendable. The talent problem is complex and requires innovations in
talent management. There were several innovations that were being attempted.
We need to see strong outcomes from these innovations documented as
longitudinal case studies in the next few years. GCCs and also identify more ways
for government/industry collaboration for the greater good of our ecosystem.”
– Vasanthi Srinivasan, Professor – Organizational Behaviour and HRM, IIM, Bangalore

“It was an absolute honor to be part of the evaluation committee for the NASSCOM GCC
Awards 2021. Every single entry had something unique and refreshing about it, and above
all it was heartening to see the strong focus on talent and diversity across industries. I want
to congratulate all the winners and acknowledge all those who sent in their entries. It was
tough but extremely fulfilling to pick the best from the best across categories. A special
shout out to everyone at NASSCOM for their continued support and a big thank you to all
my fellow panelists for making the deliberations such a pleasant experience and for the
wisdom of their reflections. I hope you all enjoy reading the case studies and learning about
the wonderful work being done by companies across India as much as I did.”
– Ritesh Talapatra, Managing Director, India, Optum
 37
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excellence
in Building Talent of the Future category

WINNERS
Shortlists
 38
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excellence
in Building Talent of the Future category
AB InBev GCC

Developing the Leaders of Tomorrow: Pluralsight, Analytics Academy,

and Project Phoenix
In 2018, AB InBev GCC transitioned from third-party operations and absorbed 800+ employees. With the
rapidly changing tech landscape of shared services in AB InBev, our dream evolved from running a delivery
center to driving profitable growth through analytics, transformation, and innovation.
Ensuring that our employees are future-ready, we started developing them to become either
domain, analytics or tech experts through in-house academies – the first of which was Analytics
Academy. The launch and subsequent success of Analytics Academy (106 graduates so far) increased our
analytics capabilities over the years to create an enterprise analytics ecosystem with diverse competencies.
To further speed transformation and leverage synergies of scale, we tied up with external partners to drive
Project Phoenix for finance functions and adopted Pluralsight (a global technology skills platform to build
in-demand tech skills) to develop tech and analytics skills. The approach for both projects was similar: we
delved into the current and future business operating models and defined the required capabilities; we then
used that information to create the success profiles for unique roles. The techno-functional success
profiles have become our north star for the capabilities we hire, grow, and reward and we are now
using this methodology for attracting talent, employee career progression, and development
programs.
More than 1,000+ employees will now have clarity about the skills required for any role in finance and tech
and are empowered with agency – which, in turn, enables the organization to deploy talent more efficiently
around emerging business priorities.

“During the pandemic year, we doubled down on our people-first

principle. We kept attracting top talent, investing in upskilling our
talent in tech and analytics, and, as such, set up the GCC for
success in the many years to come.”
– Serge De Vos, Managing Director GCC & Global Operations Head

“Over the last two years, we have built strong learning initiatives and
academies that will prepare our employees for the tech future. Through
this journey, we are investing in our employees’ tech, analytics, domain,
and leadership skills and developing leaders for tomorrow.”
– Alex Van Wonterghem, Director – Global People Business Services
 39
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excellence
in Building Talent of the Future category
Barclays Global Service Centre India

Enabling Barclays Global Service Centre to Become a Global Talent Hub

Barclays aims to foster an inclusive culture where individuals of all backgrounds feel confident in bringing their
whole selves to work.
To build a strong and skilled workforce with an entrepreneurial mindset, we have rolled out a host of virtual
facilitator-led training programs. Our programs leverage a strength-based approach by providing opportunities
to build peer networks, learn new technologies, promote an active dialogue, and enhance leadership skills.
We have gender diverse promotion assessors and panels, which help us to ensure the widest
available pool of talent is considered for promotion. Through many internal sponsorship and mentorship
programs we are focusing on skill development, staying relevant, and career progression activities for our
female technologists. Additionally, for females whom we identify as leaders of the future, we actively provide
development opportunities such as ex-officio roles and places on our flagship development programs.
We have also been actively identifying talent in the market and working with our recruitment partners. And we
use our fintech accelerator Rise to reach out and connect with diverse talent. Using artificial intelligence,
we have created an attrition prediction tool that helps us to proactively retain and ring-fence talent,
especially diverse talent, to help in our retention efforts.
To tackle the challenges arising from the health pandemic situation, Barclays had taken early steps to
understand and address colleagues’ well-being needs. With a dedicated Be Well campaign and a structured
wellbeing agenda, we have been driving focus and deliverables on four key pillars: mental, physical, financial,
social and workplace health.
As we continue to grow as an organization, our focus continues to further strengthen our talent and build a
supportive and inclusive culture for everybody.

“In a rapidly changing external environment, business agility has emerged as a key differentiator for
any organization to succeed. We, at Barclays, are extremely fortunate to have a strong talent base
across all levels of the organization that helps us in responding effectively to the rapidly evolving
market dynamics. Through a combination of field- and forum-based approach, our colleagues get to
learn new skills and apply them to solve emerging business problems on a continual basis. Each of
our learning programs is tailored as per the current demands of the industry – to encourage a
T-shaped mindset, with a focus on building deep skills in an area as well as a broad understanding of
the context around it. Having an entrepreneurial mindset, challenging the status-quo, and delivering
through collaboration and teamwork are all attributes required to succeed at Barclays.”
– Praveen Kumar, Co-CEO, Barclays Global Service Centre India

“Barclays Global Service Centre has a programmatic approach to driving learning and development
initiatives. Our programs are designed keeping in mind the demographics, specific needs at each
professional life stage, as well as the requirements of the business. We are also at the forefront of
driving gender equality at all levels of the organization. Through many internal sponsorship and
mentorship programs focused on skilling women in technology, specifically for the senior and
middle levels, we have seen an upward trend in female talent across all levels. Moreover, focus on
internal mobility, opportunities to work with global teams, and leading enterprise-wide projects have
empowered our colleagues to take charge of their careers and drive positive outcomes.”
– Uma Ratnam Krishnan, Co-CEO, Barclays Global Service Centre India
 40
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excellence
in Building Talent of the Future category
Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley India GCC SME Network

Conceived in the India GCC, the SME Network is a group of talented technology experts across the globe. It
is now a proven model for building future-ready skills at scale in a collaborative, structured, and measurable
way. This home-grown platform follows an integrated approach of identifying skills, a capability building
framework, and a SME selection and rating model. The Network adds value by giving back to the technology
community and enhancing the learning culture within the firm.
The knowledge of this unique global community, which comprises over 760 in-house SMEs, including
165+ women, is leveraged for peer-to-peer learning on technology- and domain-related topics. These
experts contribute to numerous initiatives such as knowledge sharing clubs, COE training (agile / DevOps,
data, cloud and AI/ML) and onboarding.
The Network was developed in the India GCC, scaled to other GCCs across North America, Europe, and
Asia, and further, including our core locations in New York and London. India SMEs trained technologists in
other regions by leveraging a blended learning delivery model and helped ramp up the global SME Network.
Delivering value
 Enhanced the learning culture within the firm and saved approximately $5 million in training budgets
 Increased technologist productivity by providing relevant skills
 Gave technologists a platform to showcase their work to peers
 India based AI/ML SMEs trained more than 500 team members across the globe to be future-ready
 Improved diversity by growing the number of female SMEs
 The Network took up several strategic programs that deliver business value, including a client project
which is now a Harvard case study

“Over the past few years, Morgan Stanley India GCC has been on a very
exciting journey, playing a critical role as a center of exceptional talent and
driving improved solutions and superior outcomes for our business. The
SME Network is a valuable resource group with the right expertise across
technical focus areas and leading the way in knowledge and information
sharing with other GCCs within the firm to build future-ready talent.”
– John McGrory, India Head of GIC, Morgan Stanley

“Our key priority is to invest in our people and foster a diverse and inclusive
culture. With an evolving and growing workforce footprint, we are focused on
providing employees with opportunities to learn and develop new
competencies, and the SME Network created in our India GCC has been
invaluable in helping build high quality expertise at scale.”
– Rajat Mathur, India Head of Human Resources, Morgan Stanley
 41
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excellence
in Building Talent of the Future category
Samsung R&D Institute India - Bangalore (SRI-B)

Nurturing Talent for AI Proliferation

In the product innovation space, being ready for the future is the single most important factor for success and
growth. In SRI-B, this belief has translated into the adoption of world class talent management practices that
help build the talent of the future. SRI-B has invested in building the workforce for its technology
Centers of Excellence (CoEs) through various initiatives, including hiring for niche skills, behavioral
skills programs ranging from the campus-to-corporate for campus hires to leadership development
programs at all levels. Further, SRI-B has undertaken domain deep-skilling through higher education
support and partnerships with industry and academic experts. SRI-B has also adopted technology through
partnerships (AI-based bot) or in-house development (ML model for certification success prediction), and
more. As a result, SRI-B has not only established itself as an outstanding R&D center, but is also actively
involved in sharing expertise with other GCCs and academia in key technology areas.
SRI-B has recognized the need to take a strategic approach toward talent initiatives. A good example is the
growth of the AI CoE by first establishing a hiring committee to select the best talent. Then, we nurtured the
existing talent in phases by providing classroom and online certification opportunities. This strategy has
helped in leveraging the higher education program to build research capabilities, getting representation from
all BUs with potential for the application of AI. By launching multiple other initiatives to build AI capability, SRI-
B has institutionalized AI from a vertical to a horizontal domain, giving us an edge as a key center for
AI productization. SRI-B has been seeding AI solutions used by Samsung with ownership of multiple AI-
based USP features for flagship products (Bixby, Neural acceleration, etc.). This strategy is reflected in the
spike in AI-related IP over the last few years and collaborations with Samsung AI centers to drive innovation.
We have taken a similar approach for our other CoEs, including networks & 5G, multimedia, IoT and services.
SRI-B has launched the PRISM program, which seeks to augment the existing workforce and build industry-
readiness for the student ecosystem. This program has now grown to 300+ professors and 3,000+
students, with plans to scale up to 10,000 student programs in the next three years, with a win-win-
win proposition for SRI-B, faculties, and students.

“SRI-B has dedicated significant effort toward talent capability-building over

the years. Our engineers work closely with global teams to innovate for India
and the world. The strong innovation-driven culture coupled with a focus on
continuous learning have enabled our young and veterans with a patent
mind-set nurturing to lead in the product innovation space.”
– Dipesh Shah, MD, SRI-B

“SRI-B has multiple avenues to attract and hone the skills of our talent base.
Various upskilling measures to develop leaders, adoption of latest technologies
for talent acquisition and management, various research collaborations, and
engagement in AI application areas have strengthened the AI CoE in the last
few years, helping to drive key innovations at a global level.”
– Dr. Vikram Vij, VP, SRI-B
 42
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Excellence
in Building Talent of the Future category
Societe Generale Global Solution Centre

Building Capabilities and Careers

With our ambition to be an organization of choice for building capabilities and careers, we at SG GSC India
focus on preparing our workforce for the future. As we brace ourselves to transform and converge IT and
business operations roles, we realize the importance of cross-/upskilling the workforce. Our organization
requires every employee to think digital and understand the fundamentals of financial markets and
products, while using technology and infrastructure to enable solutions. With this intent we want our
teams to be future-ready and realize the dream of being a learning organization. To build a global talent
pool of experts and specialists who combine the skills required by technology professionals and business
operations, we curated Fundamentals of Banking Operations and Digital Mindset learnings under
the Skill Enhancement and Employee Knowledge (SEEK) program. These programs have been
developed inhouse at SGGSC and have gained acceptance at Societe Generale. On successful completion
of these programs, we have seen more impactful, relevant, and innovative use cases for process
improvements. We have successfully proven the relevance of these programs over the past two years.
In addition, the talent program develops high potential employees at all levels of the organization, starting
from the grassroot level through leadership. The objective of this journey is to develop future-ready talent
for critical roles and create a strong leadership bench. The program consists of four streams aimed at
developing skills on self awareness, team management, business skills, and creating change, in alignment
with Societe Generale leadership behaviors. The team members undergo an assessment and a year-long
development program, creating a sustained and personalized learning journey. Since its inception in
2019, the program has been a great success in placing talent in leadership roles and is now part of
the organization’s strategy to review and develop talent on an annual basis.

“Societe Generale is very keen to “The talent program and the various
leverage the talented workforce of learning journeys under our SEEK
Societe Generale’s global solution program help us build a talent pipeline
centres in India and Romania to create a of versatile leaders for Societe
talent pool for the global organization. To Generale and establish the SG GSC
that end, we are committed to developing as a talent pool for the bank.”
and growing the talent base with the – Magesh Sambasivan, Chief Human
skills of the future.” Resources Officer, SG GSC India
– Sunil Shah, Global Head of SG GSC India
and Romania, and CEO of SG GSC India
 43
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Exemplary
Value-add category
This award recognizes GCCs that have demonstrated ownership and
accountability in driving strategic initiatives for their enterprises – going
above and beyond business-as-usual activities, such as new capability
building, enhancing product portfolio, improved customer experience.
India GCCs’ value proposition has evolved significantly over the past 8
to 10 years. Today, new GCC setups are providing end-to-end support
on complex work areas and are delivering business impact – well
beyond cost and operational impact. And existing GCCs are
increasingly being seen as a second headquarters for their global
enterprises – multifunctional teams, high value-add delivery, and global
ownership and impact. GCCs have been able to leverage this
opportunity to become microcosms of their organizations, as well as
hotbeds of experimentation to pilot new ideas. They are leaders, not
only in execution but in ideation and strategy as well.
 44
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Core differentiators for trailblazers

Trailblazer GCCs are constantly exploring opportunities to deliver greater value-add for their global
enterprises, from proactively showcasing GCC capabilities and intent across the global enterprise,
to driving demand, to owning strategic engagements and running talent programs. These
trailblazers have emerged as strategic entities driving global mandates across multiple dimensions
and have not shied away from making bold changes to their operating models to enable greater
flexibility and agility, and better reusability of resources.

These GCCs have demonstrated leadership across multiple dimensions, including:

 Capability ownership (true CoE model): The GCC owns one or more critical capabilities beyond
delivery, such as capabilities to change process standards. The GCC builds a robust process,
structure, and governance mechanism to drive the capability – a capability that may or may not
exist in other parts of the organization, such as a blockchain COE
 Global process/technology ownership: The global owner for certain applications or set of
processes is based out of the GCC. While this is mostly applicable for processes with high
penetration within the GCC, for many penetration is not the only driver
 End-to-end ownership: The GCC has complete end-to-end ownership of select functions across
business units globally

There are multiple instances of trailblazer GCCs running global initiatives such as developing new
products/solutions, enabling the enterprise to expand coverage of services/products/geographies,
and supporting areas with direct business impact for the enterprise, for example, enhancing end-
customer experience. For instance, a consumer product goods company’s GCC houses an
integrated analytics group that is now supporting multiple business entities across the globe.
The GCC has end-to-end ownership over the capabilities (both technology and operations) and
has been able to grow and evolve the group over time to enable better decision-making for the
global enterprise.
Going above and beyond traditional delivery responsibilities, these GCCs have demonstrated
excellence in collaborating with third-party partners and are actively involved in vendor selection,
empanelment, and performance review. For instance, a leading bank’s GCC manages the entire
global third-party vendor spend for multiple businesses. Additionally, trailblazer GCCs are playing
an active role in managing startup accelerators, academia, and industry body collaborations. There
are multiple examples of GCCs driving startup accelerator programs for their enterprises, including
governing the program end-to-end: identifying/shortlisting startups, engaging in solutioning, and
implementing in the current operating environment, all while ensuring data privacy, IP ownership,
and security protocol adherence.
These GCCs are increasingly emerging as talent hubs for their enterprises across delivery,
technology, and broader leadership. There are multiple instances of movement of senior/top
management talent between the GCC and the global enterprise.
 45
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

The trailblazer GCCs are truly emerging as extensions of their global organizations,
demonstrating empowered decision authority across multiple business areas. The constant
focus on developing capabilities to become talent hubs, demonstrating ownership and
accountability beyond delivery, and driving competitive advantage for their global enterprises
truly sets these centers apart.

“It was an honor and privilege to be part of the jury. The quality of the nominations is
a testimony of GCC maturity and the impact GCCs are making on the ecosystem.”
– Laxmikanth Venkatraman, Managing Director, Broadridge Financial
Solutions India Pvt Ltd.

“It was inspiring to see so many compelling stories of leadership, innovation,

and resilience. Kudos to all the nominees for the value they have created across
their global organizations – they made it very challenging for us to pick a few
winners. Thank you to the NASSCOM team for their thought leadership and
impeccable execution in making this happen.”
– Mahesh Sogal, Vice President, IT Transformation and International Technology, Delta

“So much fun to understand the value and competencies these leading GCCs are now
providing – wonderful to see such strong examples of fulfilling the promise the industry
envisioned just a few years ago. These GCCs will not be held captive to anyone’s lack
of imagination for upping their game.”
– Eric Simonson, Managing Partner, Research, Everest Group
 46
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Exemplary
Value-add category

WINNERS
Shortlists
 47
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Exemplary
Value-add category
Amadeus Labs

Transforming From a Cost Center to a Value Center

World leaders in travel technology, Amadeus established a center in India in 2012 that caters to APAC and
global customers. As a young center with ambitions to mature into a center of excellence, the key challenge was
not only to establish a strong engineering footprint, but also to grow rapidly in a highly competitive Indian
technology ecosystem. A robust three-year growth strategy, based on delivery excellence, ownership, and
maturity, helped drive transformation through 4 areas:
Creating global roles in India – With a robust plan, we crafted the path to develop several global roles in India
in areas such as hospitality, mobile, digital solutions, middleware platform, and security infrastructure. Significant
growth in this area has helped us change the narrative.
Building a strong product management practice – With the objective to create value drivers for customers by
partnering in their product development journeys and thus driving new revenue streams for Amadeus, significant
growth in the number of product managers in the past four years is a measure of the criticality of the work being
undertaken at the center.
Investing in building a strong innovation program – With the vision of making innovation part of Amadeus
Labs’ DNA, we put together a structured program to instill this value among our workforce. Today, the program
runs highly successfully internal hackathons, conducts patent mining workshops, makes university connects,
exchanges knowledge with industry partners, works with startups and more.
Strengthening customer connects at every step – Regular touchpoints, account mining, product development
and evolving the relationship to a strategic partnership model played a key role in this focus area. This goal
needed a forward-thinking, value driven, and result-oriented approach. Smart solutions helped some of our
customers reduce hardware costs considerably and completely transform customer experiences.
Outcome: Delivering excellence to customers, growth to the parent company
In nine years, Amadeus Labs has grown to become a global center of excellence through a robust
transformation strategy. From 400 in 2012, to over 2,000 strong and counting today, we have grown to become
the second largest engineering site worldwide for Amadeus where the best minds in the business work on
developing innovative products and solutions to accelerate the travel industry and make every traveler’s journey
seamless, connected, and delightful.

“We have undertaken this meteoric transformation journey of becoming a

value center by delivering excellence to our parent organization, our
customers, and our people. Our vision to further grow our engineering
footprint and accelerate technology advancement in the travel space sets
us another soaring challenge that we’re confident about conquering.”
– Mani Ganeshan, Head, APAC Engineering and Head, Amadeus Labs Bengaluru

“Our employees have played the most significant role in our journey.
We have partnered with our engineering workforce to ensure a people
strategy strongly aligned with our business strategy, which has led to
higher levels of ownership, commitment, and value for the center.”
– Shalini Nair Kumar, Head, People and Culture, Amadeus Labs Bengaluru
 48
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Exemplary
Value-add category
BT Group Business Services (BT GBS)

The GBS Marketing Centre of Excellence, India

Marketing is a core function that is at the center of a BT’s transformation strategy. There was a business-
critical requirement for a centralized Marketing Centre of Excellence (CoE) providing seamless end-to-end
expertise and support across the global organization.
The GBS Marketing CoE used expertise and resources to attain and sustain world-class
performance and value. The GBS classified the roles and objectives of the CoE into four key elements:
First, the CoE was required to support top-line revenue growth through expertise in insight, analytics,
solution design, partnerships, digital marketing and MarTech. Next, they evolved the location strategy
based on access to the required specialist skillsets and cost. Third, the CoE had to optimize and leverage
resources internal to the organization, attract top talent, and reduce dependency on external vendors or
agencies. Finally, the CoE had to push beyond standard GCC performance norms to deliver incremental
value to the organization, moving up the maturity curve from arbitrage-led, reliable services provider to a
value-add partner and strategic entity through the creation of new capabilities across the insight-to-cash
journey for the customer facing units and corporate units.
The team successfully added value beyond arbitrage through end-to-end process and high-
skill/judgment-intensive delivery while operating multiple BT-wide marketing initiatives. With
significant adoption of digital technologies, the team is enabling innovation through analytics, supporting
new products/services development and top line revenue growth, contributing significant cost savings, and
growing a highly specialized talent pool through this function in India. The team has achieved the
credentials of a Center of Excellence and a strategic entity across the BT Group.

“The GBS Marketing CoE has gone from strength to strength, and –
due to their success – we have been able to invest further in growing
this team despite the challenging environment. The quality of their work
is excellent, their skills are brilliant, and we were proud to recognize the
team as a Center of Excellence in BT.”
– Johnny McQuoid, Managing Director | BT Group Business Services

“The GBS Marketing CoE has gone beyond the standard role remit to
provide outstanding support for our market-facing activities. The team
has delivered brilliant solutions in complex scenarios and difficult
market conditions. I am very proud of their achievements and look
forward to their continued success.”
– Kapil Khaneja, Director and Site Lead, India | BT Group Business Services
 49
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Exemplary
Value-add category
Falabella India Pvt. Ltd.

Building Falabella’s Digital Backbone

Catalyst is the digital transformation program led by Falabella India to transform the Falabella Group’s
digital ecosystem. The intent was to build a modern digital commerce platform to power the group’s digital
ambitions, across multiple business units – Falabella, Sodimac, and Tottus across seven countries of Latin
America.
Falabella India led this transformation exercise, which involved key stakeholders across three
continents, to replace the legacy generic monolith with a modern, data driven, multi-tenant platform
that transforms the way Falabella customers interact with the organization. Over 400 Falabella India
and Thoughtworks innovators drove this initiative with 80%+ of work being done out of the GCC.
The solution included building a scalable search and catalog system, followed by a best-in-class commerce
platform to ensure a seamless, integrated journey for customers, including the payment platform. A
blueprint was created to provide guidance and to formalize the impact on the three pillars: tech, process,
and talent. Cloud-native, multi-tenant architecture driven by strong agile process and best-in-class talent
provided the ideal components to ensure successful rollout of this transformation exercise. Various systems
like search, catalog, promotions, payments, a hyper local delivery app, and the commerce platform were
built using open-source frameworks.
Catalyst had a profound impact, increasing the business Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) by 114%
and marketplace GMV by 157%.
Looking ahead, Catalyst allows the Falabella Group to build a digital ecosystem that leverages data,
technology, and talent to create a setup that caters to a platform where retailers and consumers can
combine multiple channels to market, sell, buy, and deliver goods. All of this is done leveraging Falabella’s
logistics, payment, and e-commerce capabilities to their fullest.

“Catalyst – a powerful, scalable, cloud- “Catalyst is our prevailing multi-tenant

native, multi-tenant digital commerce digital commerce platform that is
platform – is the brainchild of our powering Falabella’s digital ambitions.
innovation epicenter in India. With its It is a powerful idea that has catapulted
unique proposition, the program has Falabella into uber transformational
been a true catalyst, altering the rate at space, where tech, process, and talent
which the group can achieve a future have been brought together in perfect
state by accelerating time to market, harmony. Further, we managed to
while making Falabella the choice of achieve this despite the constraints of
every customer in Latin America.” the pandemic, which displayed a great
– Ashish Grover, CIO, Falabella Group sense of collaboration.”
– Vinayak Raichur, Senior Director of
Engineering
 50
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Exemplary
Value-add category
NetApp India Private Limited

Pioneering innovation in the hybrid cloud world

Data is today's most vital asset, and it must be optimally stored and managed throughout its lifecycle. For
nearly three decades, NetApp has maintained a laser focus on innovations that help customers build
stronger, smarter, and more efficient infrastructures. Our goal is to deliver the right data and applications to
the right place, at the right time, and with the right capabilities. When it comes to its customers’ businesses,
NetApp seeks to understand where they want to go and then help them get there with a data fabric
designed for simplicity and agility. A data fabric is an architecture and set of data services that provide
consistent capabilities across a choice of endpoints spanning hybrid multi-cloud environments. Among the
many advantages that a data fabric affords, data visibility and insights, data access and control, data
protection, and security quickly rise to the top.
Founded in Silicon Valley in 1992, NetApp is a global cloud-led, data-centric software company that
empowers organizations to lead with data in the age of accelerated digital transformation. This journey has
firm footprints in the India Global Capability Centre (GCC) that was set up in 2000.
NetApp Bangalore has added significant value to NetApp Cloud Services by catering to customer
requirements of data backup, recovery, and security, to improve agility, efficiency, and cost
benefits. NetApp Cloud Backup, SaaS Backup for Microsoft 365, and NetApp Cloud Secure are
some of the innovations that were conceptualized and developed from the India GCC and cover all
offerings from backup and disaster recovery to data security and compliance. Hundreds of clients
globally have adopted these solutions. In addition to being competitive and cost effective, these innovations
have enhanced customer experience through simplicity, efficiency, and reliability.
Innovation is what differentiates NetApp, and talent is the raw material that fuels this innovation. The GCC
actively partners with startups, industry peers/bodies, and academia, to further innovation. A focused
approach on enhancing talent acquisition, upskilling, and retention – in addition to building a collaborative
ecosystem, both globally within the firm as well as in the industry – help drive outstanding business results.

“The exemplary value add story of NetApp India in driving innovation in the cloud is
unique – it was a natural outcome of its people-oriented strategy, massive investment
in talent upskilling and management, and extensive collaboration with internal and
external ecosystems. Many cutting-edge innovations emerged from the India GCC in
Bangalore in recent times, including the industry-leading data protection and back-up
solutions, Cloud Secure, Cloud Backup, and SaaS Backup.”
– Ravi Chhabria, Vice President and Managing Director, NetApp India

“We passionately believe that talent and innovation have a symbiotic

relationship. Nurturing employees drives innovation, which in turn attracts
motivated people best suited for the job. This belief has been the
cornerstone of our India GCC team’s investment in the value of data across
hybrid multi-cloud IT infrastructure. And we’ve achieved this through an
unwavering customer focus by a diverse talent pool with purpose.”
– Protima Achaya, Head – India HR and APAC Talent Acquisition, NetApp
 51
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Exemplary
Value-add category
Siemens Technology and Services Private Limited

Competitor Analysis
To thrive and grow our business in today’s fast-paced market, competitor analysis / product and market study
is a key strategic tool we use to benchmark our products against industry bests and customer needs. This
effort was driven by our headquarters office primarily as it was not a mandate of GCC India. However, for our
global software products, especially with recent digitalization trends, IoT, and the focus given to user
experience in market solutions, we needed to enhance competitor analysis to enable a competitive edge. This
was an opportunity where we pitched proactively.
GCC India led the journey for this strategic initiative from inception through design, execution to
ongoing monitoring, by creating an innovative, repeatable competitor analysis framework with
complete ownership in India – and it was done beyond existing delivery responsibility. The framework
includes domain, UX, and software architecture evaluation using methods like product feature comparison,
customer journey map, and ATAM by leveraging our cross-functional capabilities and collaborating with the
ecosystem partners like the IP team, regional sales, marketing, and the customer care teams. Due to the
excellent feedback from our partner at headquarters, we successfully scaled the initiative across the Siemens
Electrical Products (EP) business, and today we continuously monitor improvements to the framework.
Some key outcomes include addition of new market trending features to the product backlog (20
features), reduction of technical debts spend (by 35%), through the set up of a future-ready
architecture reduction in R&D spend (by 76%) of Siemens EP system architecture / competitor
analysis functions, addition of new revenue streams (7% increase). Additionally, we converted two ideas
to new products, competitor analysis is institutionalized for new product development leading to a strong IP
portfolio, high skill capabilities / business-critical roles like global product owners / system architects were
established in India. By creating an innovative, repeatable competitor analysis framework and driving this
strategic initiative at the enterprise level, GCC India has grown to be a strategic partner to Siemens EP
business globally, steadily moving toward an engineering leadership maturity level.

“By challenging ourselves and unlocking our collective rich experience to grow in the
value chain, we have exhibited a very strong sense of ownership and developed global
capability leadership across domains in digital technology, operations, and innovation,
all of which has resulted in significant value creation and competitive advantage for our
global business partners across all the businesses.”
– Pankaj Vyas, CEO and Managing Director, Siemens Technology and Services Private Limited

“With sustained effort, we have surpassed the limited scope of expectation

from an offshore team. Our support for driving global initiatives like agile
transformations and creating innovative frameworks to gain insights from
competitor analysis is much appreciated by our partners at headquarters.”
– Amit Arora, Head, Smart Grids and Infrastructure,
Siemens Technology and Services Private Limited
 52
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

Exemplary
Value-add category
TransUnion Global Capability Center India

Reimagining the Next Generation of Credit Reporting Platforms

TransUnion Global Capability Center (GCC) is one of the key strategic enablers of TransUnion’s “Path to
Possible” – a journey that defines our enterprise-wide transformative initiatives toward global operating
model adoption to new ways of working, digital transformation, cloud transformation, and platform
reengineering among others.
The success of our Chennai center has paved the way to the GCC’s expansion in other regions
across India and South Africa. Now, GCCs are a well-rounded microcosm of the enterprise,
constituting 30% of our global tech force and delivering the necessary scale of volume + value for the
enterprise. Our steady-state operations from day-zero with zero business disruption have been a
significant value add, especially during the pandemic, in demonstrating higher operational resilience while
enabling faster time to market.
Within three years of inception, our GCC evolved rapidly to become a tech hub for TransUnion’s
international markets (presence outside of the US). Our GCC is currently involved in building and
architecting our next-generation international credit reporting platform focusing on creating a
comprehensive digital onboarding solution (TU Seamless Onboarding) ensuring a seamless customer
acquisition process. This international credit reporting platform serves as a gold standard that can be
implemented across the globe.
As we make an impact internally and externally, the secret to our success is creating a culture of
associate-driven excellence. It has enabled us in developing a mature force of leaders and influencers,
re-skilling/up-skilling our associates through a slew of creative hands-on approaches based on
experiential learning, gamification, a skill ownership incentive program, and cross-functional collaboration
across the enterprise. TransUnion GCC has enhanced our global operating model with one-team
and capability-led teams being the dominant themes. We strongly believe and take pride in creating
awesome experiences for customers and associates.

“Our global capability centers are uniquely positioned to drive the next
wave of growth for the enterprise through a slew of transformative models.
As we create value for TransUnion, our continued efforts in building next-
gen capabilities and high-performing teams enabled by a culture of
associate-driven excellence will assure our success.”
– Debasis Panda, SVP and Head – TransUnion GCC India

“Our GCC offers a full stack of capabilities to fuel innovation and act as a
catalyst for customer success. We are accelerating our business
transformation by developing the next-generation international credit
reporting platform, built on cutting-edge technology solutions offering
scalability, reduced time to market, and awesome customer experience.”
– Balaji Narasimhan, Senior Director and Delivery Head – TransUnion GCC India
 53

APPENDIX
 54
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

DEMOGRAPHICS
The 2021 NASSCOM GCC Awards program
had participation from 110 GCCs and 250+
submissions across the five categories

GCC participation – Retail and consumer Manufacturing,

distribution by product goods 9% automotive
industry vertical 10%
BFSI

10% 33%
Healthcare &
life sciences

Others include legal, professional TMT

Others
services, transportation and logistics,
FinTech and commercial real estate 11% 28%

GCC submissions – >10,000 FTEs

<500 FTEs
distribution by 14%
award categories 5,000 to
20%
10,000 FTEs
500-1,000 FTEs
17%
9%
28% 1,000 to 2,000 FTEs
2,000 to 5,000 FTEs 12%

GCC participation – Less than 5 years

distribution by GCC
tenure 29% 23%
More than 15 years

5-10 years
22%
10-15 years
28%
 55
NASSCOM GCC AWARDS 2021

TEAM

Sukanya Roy Ashish Sehdev

Director GCC and BPM, Vice President, Everest Group
NASSCOM

K S Viswanathan Prashray Kala

Vice President Industry Vice President, Everest Group
Initiatives, NASSCOM

Priya George Bharath M

Manager BPM and GCC, Practice Director, Everest Group
NASSCOM

Shreya De Raghav Agarwal

Research Analyst GCC Senior Analyst, Everest Group
and BPM, NASSCOM
NASSCOM is the industry association for the IT-BPM sector in
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Everest Group is a research firm focused on strategic IT, business
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www.everestgrp.com.

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