Global In-House Centers (GICs) were first seen in India in the 1990s as an alternative to IT outsourcing arrangements with third-party vendors. The principal driver was labor-cost arbitrage between the United States or Europe and India. The banking, financial services and insurance industries were early adopters. In their original iteration, GICs were known as “offshore captive centers.” A number of these captives were later sold to outsourcing vendors, particularly in the years following the Great Recession.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in GICs in India across a wider range of industries, including transportation, telecom, media, manufacturing, medical devices, oil & gas, aerospace, retail and hospitality. In “Global In-House Centers in India, v2.0,” Pillsbury partners Jeff Hutchings and Craig de Ridder explore how GICs in India are evolving from cost-saving platforms into Innovation Centers for emerging digital technologies that can provide a competitive advantage.