Pilots call it “the first 60 seconds.” Most aircraft accidents, when traced back, are rooted in decisions made during take-off, not mid-flight. The plane is already in the air before anyone realizes something was missed.
GCC setup has its own version of this.
Most GCCs don’t struggle because of poor execution. They struggle because of decisions made in the earliest days of setup. Location, structure, hiring, governance. Things that seemed fine at the time and became expensive later.
After partnering on 210+ end-to-end GCC setups, one thing is consistent. The mistakes that slow companies down are almost never about execution. They’re about what was decided, or not decided, right at the beginning.
Here are the five we see most often.
Getting the speed vs strategy balance right is the first thing the right GCC partner will tell you matters. Most don’t listen until year two.
Speed is exciting. When someone tells you your GCC can be up and running in 4 to 5 weeks, it’s hard not to be drawn to that. And there’s nothing wrong with moving fast. Efficiency matters.
But one question is worth asking before anything else. Fast to what, exactly?
Week 5 and year 3 are very different conversations. In the first few weeks, the wins are visible. An office, a legal entity, the first hires. It feels like momentum. But underneath that, there are decisions being made or not made that will define what the GCC becomes.
Who owns which capabilities? How does the center connect with global teams? Is the structure built to scale or just built to start?
These aren’t year two questions. They’re week one questions.
Speed and scale aren’t opposites. The right setup can give you both. But they do require different things from you early on. Different conversations, different decisions, different clarity on where you want the GCC to be in year three.
The best time to make those decisions isn’t when you’re already running. It’s before the plane leaves the ground.
Location strategy is one of the most underestimated decisions in an end-to-end GCC setup. The right city isn’t the cheapest one or the most convenient one.
Many organizations equate progress with securing office space quickly or leveraging providers that offer ready infrastructure. The office is booked, the infrastructure is ready, and it feels like the hard part is done.
It isn’t.
Treating location as a cost or real estate decision is one of the most common mistakes in GCC setup. A handful of leading hubs account for over 70 percent of GCC talent demand in India and that concentration exists for a reason. Talent ecosystems, academic pipelines, innovation clusters, these are what determine whether your GCC can hire well in year one and scale well in year three.
When decisions are based primarily on cost or convenience, the gaps show up later. Attrition climbs, certain roles become hard to fill, and the center plateaus before it reaches its potential.
The right location question isn’t where we can set up. It’s where can we grow.
No two GCCs are the same and no turnkey GCC setup model should treat them like they are. Your trigger defines your design.
A private equity backed company setting up a GCC has one thing on its mind. Efficiency metrics on the board deck by month six. Vendor stack optimized. Costs visible. Returns measurable.
A company setting up a GCC for digital transformation might not even have a finalized org chart by month three. Because the work itself is still being defined.
Both are on track. Both can be wildly successful. But they are running completely different races, and the mistake enterprises make is treating them the same way.
A market shock GCC hires for speed. A customer proximity GCC hires for relationship management. The governance rhythm that works for a 200-person delivery center will paralyze a 40-person innovation lab.
Most setup playbooks don’t account for any of this. Same steps, same structure, every time.
Before any plan, ask what this GCC is actually for. Not the board deck version. The honest answer. Because that’s what every decision after it should be built around.
In a rapid GCC setup environment, hiring pressure is real. But volume without strategy in your first few hires is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make.
Most companies planning a GCC think about hiring in terms of numbers. Fifty people by quarter two. Two hundred by end of year one. The headcount target becomes the milestone and hitting it feels like progress.
But the first three hires shape the center more than the next hundred combined.
The first is your GCC head. This one hire sets the culture, becomes the bridge between India and headquarters, and attracts talent that no job description ever will. The pressure to move fast creates a temptation to hire someone available rather than wait for someone right. Start the search the moment the GCC decision is made.
The second is your management layer. The manager who joins alongside the first engineers sets the tone and becomes the connection point between India and HQ from week one.
The third is your first ten individual contributors. These are the people who become the unofficial definition of what good looks like. The talent market watches who you hire early and self-selects accordingly.
Headcount is easy to measure. Who you put in the room first is what shapes everything that follows.
Choosing the right GCC setup specialist is as important as any location or hiring decision. Independence matters more than most companies realise.
Every mistake in this list has something in common. It wasn’t about effort or intent. It was about experience. Knowing which decisions matter before they become problems. Knowing what year three looks like when you’re still in week one.
But there’s a question most companies forget to ask. Is the partner advising you truly independent?
Because the recommendations you receive during setup are only as good as the incentives behind them. Some partners have real estate commitments that make certain locations a convenient default. Some have government MOUs that quietly narrow what should be an open decision. Some are tied to specific service providers before you’ve even walked in the room.
You won’t see this on a proposal. But you’ll feel it later.
The right partner has no preferred answer before the question is even asked. That kind of independence is rare. And it’s worth looking for before you sign anything.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth. Most GCC mistakes are made by smart people with good intentions. The problem was never capability. It was clarity.
And yet the metrics most companies use to measure a successful GCC setup are the ones easiest to count. How fast it launched. How many people were hired. How quickly the office was full. Those numbers look great on a slide. They rarely tell you whether you’ve built something that will matter in three years.
The companies pulling ahead aren’t the ones who moved fastest or filled seats quickest. They’re the ones who were honest about their trigger, deliberate about their design, and rigorous about who they chose to build with.
The GCC model is maturing fast. The bar for what good looks like is rising. And the gap between a GCC that scales and one that plateaus is almost always decided before the office opens.
The question isn’t whether to set up a GCC. The question is whether the setup will reflect the ambition behind it.
THANK YOU
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