Tesco, the British retailer operating more than 4,000 stores, processes payroll for around 400,000 employees and recruits roughly 130,000 people every year. The nerve centre for much of that work is not in the UK. It is in Bengaluru.
A significant portion of Tesco’s global technology and analytics capability now sits in India. The AI models shaping pricing, personalization, and demand forecasting across markets are developed there. Route optimization, robotic picking solutions, fulfilment technology, and real-time quality monitoring for fresh produce are built there.
Over the last decade, Tesco also exited the US, sold operations in Thailand and Malaysia, and doubled down on its UK core.
Most observers viewed that as geographic consolidation.
In reality, it reflects a broader shift that is reshaping retail globally.
The most important geography in a modern retail strategy may no longer be where retailers open stores. It may be where they build capability.
That distinction matters because retail is entering a period where competitive advantage is increasingly being determined by the quality of its intelligence systems — pricing engines, forecasting models, personalization platforms, fulfilment algorithms, and digital products that shape decisions at scale.
And increasingly, those capabilities are being built in India.
For years, the retail GCC playbook was relatively straightforward. Move transactional work closer to talent. Improve efficiency. Reduce costs. Scale operations.
That model created value.
But it also had limits.
Eventually, every enterprise reaches the same question:
What are we building here that we could not simply outsource?
The retailers creating the most value from their GCCs are increasingly answering that question through capability ownership.
Across the sector, GCCs are moving beyond transactional support into product engineering, platform development, data science, AI, and enterprise decision-making. Centres that were originally established to improve efficiency are increasingly becoming responsible for capabilities that directly influence customer experience, pricing, inventory, fulfilment, and growth.
What makes this shift particularly significant is its speed.
Across the GCC ecosystem, the traditional journey from support centre to strategic innovation hub is collapsing. Nearly all GCCs established since FY2021 have entered with product or portfolio mandates from day one, while almost half launched with AI, machine learning, or data science capabilities embedded from inception.
The slow-build path is not gone, but retailers entering today and still choosing purely transactional mandates risk building for a world that no longer exists.
This is the contradiction most retail leaders underestimate.
Retail possesses some of the richest consumer and operational datasets in the global economy. Every day, retailers generate signals around purchasing behaviour, pricing elasticity, inventory movement, loyalty patterns, fulfilment performance, and customer preferences.
AI has direct commercial application across almost every part of the business:
If any industry should be leading the AI-led GCC transformation, it should be retail.
Instead, it remains one of the least mature sectors in India’s GCC ecosystem.
Across the 2,117 GCCs operating in India today, only 17% of retail GCCs have reached Portfolio Hub maturity, where centres own products, influence business outcomes, and participate in strategic decision-making. Another 17% operate at Transformation Hub maturity.
Compare that with automotive, where 44% of GCCs have reached Portfolio maturity, or software and internet, where Portfolio and Transformation models have become the norm.
Retail has some of the richest data assets and most commercially relevant AI use cases of any sector, yet its GCC maturity still trails several industries.
The issue is not talent.
India now hosts more than 1,200 GCCs with AI and machine learning capabilities and roughly 28% of global GCC AI talent, second only to the United States.
Retail has access to the talent.
It has access to the ecosystem.
It has access to the use cases.
What it often lacks is strategic intent.
Part of the reason is historical. Over the last decade, many retailers were consumed by store transformation, omnichannel expansion, supply-chain resilience, and inflationary pressure. Technology investment increased, but capability ownership often remained fragmented. As a result, retail entered the AI era with exceptional data assets but comparatively fewer centres designed to convert those assets into enterprise advantage.
The pattern playing out across retail today looks remarkably similar to what happened earlier in software, automotive, and semiconductors.
Walmart’s India teams are building marketplace, fulfilment, and supply chain platforms. Target operates in India as a strategic product and engineering hub supporting nearly 2,000 stores. Costco has announced its first GCC in Hyderabad. IKEA and several global consumer brands continue to expand technology and digital capabilities across India.
Historically, companies began with transactional work and spent years climbing the maturity curve.
Today’s entrants are skipping much of that journey.
More than a quarter of GCCs established in the last five years have already reached Portfolio or Transformation maturity — a progression that historically took five to ten years.
The gap between leaders and laggards is widening faster than many retailers realize.
The GCC conversation is often framed as an operating model decision.
Increasingly, it is a competitive strategy decision.
Retailers delaying GCC transformation are not simply postponing a sourcing choice. They are delaying ownership of the systems that will define retail competitiveness over the next decade:
The retailers creating the most value from their GCCs are not necessarily investing more. They are making different choices. They are clearer about what they want the centre to own, where they want decisions to sit, and which capabilities they believe will matter most over the next decade.
The difference is increasingly visible in the speed at which they are building AI, digital products, and enterprise-wide platforms.
Retail spent the last two decades optimizing physical networks — stores, sourcing, logistics, and supply chains.
The next generation of retail leaders is likely to be defined less by physical scale and more by the quality of the decisions they can make at scale.
That is why the conversation around GCCs is changing. This is no longer primarily about cost, talent, or location. It is about where capability sits inside the enterprise.
The retailers creating long-term advantage are increasingly concentrating ownership of product development, AI, analytics, and digital platforms in centres that are deeply connected to business outcomes. Much of the sector, however, still treats those centres primarily as delivery organisations.
Across our work with more than 220 GCC setups and transformations, we see this pattern repeatedly. The conversation has moved beyond cost, talent, and location. It is now about capability ownership — and who controls the systems that shape customer experience, pricing, inventory, and growth.
What stands out in retail is not the opportunity itself, but how much of it remains untapped.
The retailers creating long-term advantage are increasingly treating GCCs not as support infrastructure, but as strategic capability hubs that influence enterprise outcomes. They are concentrating ownership of product development, AI, analytics, and digital platforms in centres that are deeply connected to business priorities and commercial results.
The implications extend far beyond the GCC itself.
As AI becomes embedded into every layer of retail, from pricing and personalization to supply chains and fulfilment, the question is no longer where work gets done. It is where critical capabilities are built, owned, and scaled.
The retailers that understand that shift early will not simply build better GCCs.
They will build stronger, more resilient businesses and ultimately compete differently.
At Zinnov, we’ve spent more than 24 years helping global enterprises build, scale, and transform Global Capability Centers. Having enabled more than 220 GCC setups across industries, including retail, we’ve helped organizations navigate the shifts that have defined the GCC journey, from cost arbitrage to capability ownership and now to AI-led transformation.
THANK YOU
FOR YOUR RESPONSE
