Every Indian child knows the story of Rama's bridge to Lanka. The monkeys hauled boulders, and a small squirrel rolled in the sand and shook it between the stones. No single stone built the bridge. Patience did.
India's Global Capability Centres (GCCs) have been building a similar bridge for three decades. They have brought some 2.4 million engineers and professionals into work that spans semiconductors, cars, medical devices and other products built for the world.
India has proved that it can design for the world. What it has not yet proved is that it can consistently take those designs all the way to the factory floor, the supplier network and the global market.
That is the next test for the GCC story.
The shift matters because the old argument for India is becoming less compelling. For years, global companies could justify expanding their Indian operations on cost. But the wage gap with developed markets has shrunk from 60 to 70 percent two decades ago to about 10 percent today. India cannot build its next phase of competitiveness on cheaper talent alone.
It has to build on what that talent can create.
{{/usCountry}}It has to build on what that talent can create.
{{/usCountry}}That requires a change in how global companies think about their Indian centres. An engineering centre that executes decisions made elsewhere can only go so far. An innovation centre that has a say in what gets built, where it gets manufactured and how it reaches customers can create a very different kind of value.
The journey takes time. Applied materials came to India in 2003, real innovation arrived only after a decade. Mercedes-Benz's R&D centre, opened in 1996 and was nearly shut 11 years later. Today it employs over 13,000 people and files more than 200 patents a year.
These examples point to a larger lesson: capability does not automatically translate into ownership.
India's challenge is to close that gap.
Part of it lies outside the GCC itself. Our engineering has outrun our supplier base. Hardware design follows suppliers, and Indian ecosystems remain thin in components, precision machining and finance. Fonterra shelved a sports-nutrition launch because about ninety percent of the key ingredients had to be imported.
Policy can either close this gap or widen it. R&D equipment can wait months at customs. Transfer-pricing assessments can make innovation more difficult to capture within a multinational structure. Research grants tied to domestic ownership can exclude the very global companies doing significant innovation in India.
None of these problems requires a reinvention of the system. They require the system to recognise that India is no longer simply a location for execution.
The market matters too. For many global firms, India still represents 2% of revenue, too small to design for. But once India becomes a meaningful market, the logic changes. Construction equipment offers one example. Electric vehicles and medical devices are now moving towards that threshold.
This is where the GCC story meets India's manufacturing ambition.
A few companies have already demonstrated what the completed bridge can look like. JCB India now out-produces JCB's British base. Kohler's Indian engineers designed most of a new engine that is built in Aurangabad and exported to the West.
Designed in India. Made in India. Sold to the world.
That should be the ambition for the next generation of GCCs. Not simply more engineers. Not simply more centres. More decisions made here. More products moving from Indian design teams into Indian factories and supplier networks. More intellectual property created here and commercialised globally.
The requests from GCC leaders are remarkably practical: faster customs, fairer transfer-pricing rules, grants open to all who innovate here, industry-ready engineers and deeper commitment from parent companies.
The opportunity is equally practical. India has already laid many of the stones. The question is whether it will connect them.
The window is open, but competitors will not wait. The bridge is half-built. The next decade will decide whether India merely designs the future for others, or becomes one of the places where that future is actually built.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Yajna Prakash, partner and director, Acclime India and Arushi Ray, senior consultant.