In an interview with Express Computer, Dr Sanjeev Rastogi, CEO-GCC, Adani Group, discusses India’s growing role as a hub for Global Capability Centres (GCCs). With over 1,500 GCCs operating in the country, Rastogi highlights key drivers such as India’s rich talent pool and rapid tech adoption. He shares insights on talent management, the importance of academia-corporate partnerships, and how Adani’s GCC is leveraging AI, automation, and cloud technologies to enhance operational efficiency and drive innovation across various sectors.
What do you think is the key factor attracting over 1,500 GCCs to India, employing more than 1.5 million people?
There are a couple of key factors. First, India has a vast pool of talent, particularly among the younger, employable age group. Second, the adoption of new technology is much higher in India. Third, India has proven its ability to showcase what can be done remotely, and in many ways, we’ve become the Silicon Valley of the world. I experienced this first-hand when I joined American Express 32 years ago, followed by Genpact and other organisations.
Now, there’s enough confidence and proof for anyone looking to invest here. It’s not just about having a large talent pool, but a skilled workforce with the right kind of talent and depth. Whether it’s transactional processing, analytics, judgment, R&D, or innovation, India offers significant depth in every field. This attracts GCCs, many of which focus purely on R&D, innovation, finance, HR, techno-commercial work, or insurance. The breadth and depth of talent available here are major factors drawing them to India.
You mentioned India as a vast pool of talent. What are the best practices in your opinion to nurture, retain, and develop this talent?
The key to nurturing, retaining, and developing talent lies in bringing in fresh talent and grooming them over the years. We run a lot of talent management programs, and we focus on grooming individuals over the next two to three years. Many of them come from premier institutes, and we have a clearly defined path and line of sight for our future leaders.
People join us as graduate trainees, and others come from institutions like the IIMs, joining programs such as ALPs (Accelerated Leadership Programs). A significant amount of talent enters the organisation, and we nurture and groom them with a specific path. They are asked to work on strategies aligned with their career trajectory, with a vision that spans up to 10 or 20 years.
As a result, most of our future leadership will likely come from this talent pool, and we expect that 50% of our leaders in the future will emerge from the talent we’ve groomed over time. Having a structured, thoughtful program is crucial, as it provides opportunities for everyone. We bring young talent from campuses into the corporate world, nurture them, and build their skills over time.
This is how we maintain talent—by focusing on nurturing and growing our own talent pool rather than getting into a competitive race of hiring from the same pool as others. It’s about developing the talent you need for your own growth.
Some GCCs have established partnerships with institutions and universities over the years. Does your organisation have similar initiatives?
Yes, we do. We run campus-to-corporate programs to ensure that students understand what they are getting into. We intervene before they officially come on board, so they are already familiar with the community. That’s the approach we take, and it has been effective.
Given the scale of Adani Group’s operations across diverse sectors, how does the GCC ensure business continuity, resilience, and cybersecurity in an increasingly complex digital landscape?
I have coined a term called “4 E’s”: efficiency, effectiveness, experience, and ultimately excellence. Our goal is for the GCC to drive operational excellence across the Adani Group, which spans a wide range of sectors, including power, thermal, retail, ports, airports, cement, and more.
First, we focus on efficiency, ensuring productivity across all our operations. Second, we emphasise effectiveness by providing assurance, maintaining a single source of truth, and ensuring quality. Third, we prioritise the experience for both our stakeholders and employees. This is the core of what the GCC strives to achieve.
With 90% of our business based in India, we are a unique GCC, managing 600 sites from a single headquarters. We are building an ecosystem that embraces digitisation and new emerging technologies while creating a talent hub for the group’s future needs. In fact, 80-90% of our functions sit within the GCC, making it a vital talent factory for our business.
India has emerged as a key hub for GCCs, with organisations leveraging them for high-value strategic work. How do you see the role of Adani’s GCC evolving in this landscape, and what opportunities or challenges do you anticipate in the coming years?
The challenge lies in ensuring that academia, the government, and corporations collaborate to create an ecosystem where the time lag between campus and corporate life is minimised. The talent pool in India is vast, but we are not able to effectively bring the right talent into the corporate sector, and it takes significant time to get them up to speed. If we can intervene at the right time, ideally in the first or second year of education, and groom students accordingly by updating their curriculum, it would resolve many of these issues.
Since there is no shortage of talent, both the government and corporations must invest in elevating it to the required level. If we want to sustain the growth of GCCs and bring in new technologies, analytics, AI, automation, and innovation, we must have the right talent in place. I envision this running as a long-term program, where India is recognised globally as the capital of AI and digital technology. That is what we should aim for.
How is Adani’s GCC integrating AI, automation, and cloud technologies to enhance business efficiency and drive digital innovation across the group?
What we’ve done is we haven’t gone for a big bang approach. Instead, we started by identifying our business problems and determining the use cases. We recognised that we can’t solve every issue, so we focused on identifying the business cases and use cases that would have the largest impact on the business and are feasible to implement.
We’ve prepared a list of several projects, and our analytics and AI teams focus on those specific business areas. This way, we ensure a larger impact that aligns with our business objectives. I believe it’s essential to align both AI and analytics with business goals. You can’t run AI or analytics in isolation; they need to work closely and collaboratively with the business. That’s the approach we’ve taken, and it’s been working well for us.