Captives Take Centre Stage

Even as IT services is facing a slowdown, global capability centres in India are transforming from back-end offices providing round-the-clock technical support into innovation hubs for MNCs. And they are hiring!

- Vidya S

AT ASTRAZENECA’S GLOBAL Innovation and Technology Centre in Chennai, when you strap on a virtual reality (VR) headset and turn on their XR (AR/VR) tech set-up, you are transplanted into an interactive digital replica of the Covid-19 vaccine maker’s drug production facility in Sweden. At the click of a button, you can be on your way to learning how to bottle vials of medicines, all without ever setting foot on the assembly line or touching the actual drugs. Developed entirely by their captive unit in India, the software module saves the pharma giant significant dollars. “The drugs produced by operators during training have to be discarded. That’s a lot of waste. But when you train virtually, you reduce that waste and time. Think of it like pilot training on simulators,” says Siva Padmanabhan, MD & and Head of Global Innovation and Technology Centre, AstraZeneca.

If Japan has an equivalent of GooglePay called Rakuten Pay, it is because the Japanese conglomerate Rakuten Group’s Bengaluru Global Capability Centre (GCC) built the platform. The GCC even manages the entire product—its UX, the back-end, and the strategy. “Whether adding a ‘split pay’ feature to the app or handling 50 million users coming to our e-commerce website or app, it’s all done from here,” says Sunil Gopinath, CEO of Rakuten India.