One of the more grounded conversations at the NASSCOM GCC Summit 2026 (Mumbai) came during the session titled “Building GCC Resilience in an Uncertain World.”
The session was moderated by Ruchi Bhatia (South Asia Economy Editor, Bloomberg). It featured Rajesh Nambiar (nasscom), Sirisha Voruganti (MD & CEO, Lloyds Technology Centre), and Uma Ratnam Krishnan (Managing Director, Optum India).
The discussion moved beyond the usual narrative of GCC growth to focus instead on a harder question: what makes the GCC structurally resilient in an environment shaped by AI disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, cybersecurity risks, and rapidly changing talent expectations?
Rajesh reflected on how India’s GCC journey itself has evolved over the last 25 years. Earlier conversations, he noted, were centered around proving India’s relevance to global enterprises. Today, that question has largely been settled.
“The challenge now is different”, he said.
India may have scale and engineering talent, but sustaining long-term relevance will require raising the quality bar further across skills, research capability, academia-industry collaboration, and policy frameworks. Rajesh also pointed to the importance of continued government engagement around taxation, transfer pricing, and ease of doing business as GCC mandates become more strategic.
The conversation then shifted toward what resilience actually means inside modern enterprises.
Sirisha said GCCs today no longer need to prove operational capability. Most global enterprises already trust their India centers with critical work. As a result, newer GCCs are increasingly starting with product and platform ownership from the outset.
But with that ownership comes a new level of scrutiny.
According to Sirisha, resilience is now a board-level conversation. Enterprise boards are asking tougher questions around cybersecurity, operational continuity, AI readiness, and workforce transformation. There is growing pressure to build self-healing applications, self-service systems, and technology environments that can operate with minimal disruption.
She also pointed to how generative AI is beginning to reshape workforce structures themselves. Companies are already debating what future engineering teams will look like in an AI-assisted environment, where prompt engineering, AI operations, and highly specialized problem-solving skills may become more important than traditional software development roles.
“The willingness to learn is very high in markets like India and China,” she observed, adding that companies will increasingly need to pay a premium for niche AI and advanced technology skills.
Uma brought another important perspective to the discussion: resilience itself has changed.
Earlier, companies planned for isolated disruptions. Today, uncertainty has become more continuous and structural.
“How do you build a compliant and resilient business at the same time?” she asked, noting that boards now expect resilience planning to be embedded into enterprise strategy itself.
Uma also emphasized that the nature of work is changing faster than formal job structures can adapt. In response, organizations will need to focus more aggressively on learning velocity, personalized employee training, and integrated delivery models that combine business, technology, and AI capabilities more seamlessly.
Across the session, one message became increasingly clear: resilience is no longer being viewed as an operational safeguard alone. It is becoming a measure of how prepared enterprises are for continuous change.
