Beyond the Hype: What Will Truly Define GCCs in 2030 Ft. Rohit Kaila, Wayfair India

Nitika: Hello and welcome to GCC Unfiltered, the latest podcast out of the Zinnov podcast series table. There’s been plenty of noise around Global Capability Centers or GCCs as we know it. There have been numbers, headlines, hype, but what is really important is going beyond all of that to what really matters. In this series, we are gonna be speaking to a bunch of leaders where we are going to get into the brass tacks of what works, what does not, and what truly matters.

Hi everyone. I’m Nitika Goel, the managing partner and CMO at Zinnov, and I’m gonna be the host for this particular series. Today I have an incredibly interesting guest with me, Rohit Kaila, who’s the Head of Technology and the Site Leader of Wayfair, India. What’s really interesting about Rohit is he’s probably seen four cycles of GCC, has been around, has experience in the US, has experience in India.

Seen it when nobody really knew what a GCC is, built it from grounds up, is now set up a center and heading a center, which is riding the whole GCC wave. So he really has seen it all, knows it all, experienced it all. And what’s very interesting is Wayfair is an e-commerce or a D2C marketplace and now going offline.

Whereas Rohit in his past avatar has worked in Walmart, which was largely offline that went online. So he’s gone through this full cycle of retail and so I’m very excited to have him here today. Thank you Rohit, for making the time.

Rohit: Thank you for having me. It’s been an interesting ride, so looking forward to the conversation.

Nitika: Absolutely. But I’d like to start with who Wayfair is and what Wayfair does. You’ve known very well in the US but, and engineers probably know you here, but for the larger Indian audience, who is Wayfair and what does Wayfair do?

Rohit: So Wayfair is one of the largest home segment online e-commerce retailers in the world. A large part of our market is really in North America, which is where we operate very strongly, very strong brand name, known for very strong customer retention, and we’re loved by our customers. But essentially the whole idea is: can we make sure that we are a place where people can shop online?

We have of course, as you said, also started doing physical retail, to a smaller extent now. But the whole idea really is to be the go-to place for anything home. And we have not diversified and said that we’ll do everything, but we want to specialize in home and do it so well that that is why we are a very strong brand name in that specific space.

Nitika: I recently went to the US and every single, like often you think of furniture buying as a phase-of-life decision. So, Rohit, I was also mentioning earlier on that, you’ve been around in the ecosystem. You started your career at Bell Labs, I believe.

Rohit: Yep.

Nitika: Right. So very different. Then you moved to India. I think you have worked with Walmart, you’ve worked with Intuit and now with Wayfair. So you’ve really seen different scales, different cycles, different industries. If you had to talk about your GCC experience in a nutshell and the evolution that you have seen in the industry, could you share a little insight on that?

Rohit: Yeah. GCCs have gone through multiple cycles, as you said. I actually, for a very short period of time, worked at Cadence. Anybody who finished studies in the US and wanted to come back to India used to come work for Cadence in those days. Bell Labs of course had a center here as well. I did a startup in the US, a startup in India as well.

I worked for Yahoo, and that was one of the early companies that got it really right in terms of setting up a great center in India. Walmart was a huge amount of transformation — a company that did not set it right eventually got it right, but it took them many years. Intuit of course was very well-run, very well-liked by employees.

What has really stuck with me is the level of talent that is available and the level of talent that has been trained — it has been almost a monotonically increasing function and at many times almost an exponentially increasing function.

Nitika: So when you’re talking about talent, are you talking about the technical prowess of the talent, the ability to understand end-customer thinking, the ability to lead in terms of the roles that they have here?

Rohit: Yeah. So interestingly, the first time I set up something in India was my first startup. I started it with my professor in the US and he said, you wanted to be in India, go set up a center. And I was two, three years experienced. I was setting up something in those days to get an engineer who knew C programming. To build something in those days was impossible. You could only find COBOL programmers, very low-end engineers.

Fast forward to today where you can get extremely strong product design as well as people having very strong business context of what they’re trying to do. And it has been an extremely good cycle where we’ve had a domestic market, especially in the retail sector, which is very strong.

If you come to Bengaluru for example, we find people who worked in Flipkarts of the world and Amazon dot in. We have a thriving local market, strong product and business context. That ecosystem is so strong that I think other than the US probably that ecosystem doesn’t exist anywhere in the form that it exists in India.

Nitika: So then I do have to bring the elephant in the room, right? We are talking about AI. We are saying that we are gonna be moving from a triangle or a pyramid to a quadrilateral shape where we are seeing that young engineers will no longer be necessary with AI playing a lot of those roles. Given that India has been able to build a bank of such complex skills, how do you think this is going to evolve?

Rohit: First is the basics. We don’t even have our own LLM, right? Government, academia, people are investing to say we should have some fundamental research in that area. That’s an area that India needs to do better in. The other side of the spectrum — how do you actually use generative AI to go build really great value for the company? I think we are almost at par, maybe even above par in some cases.

India has been identified as one of the digitally very strong ecosystems. The part that I feel may fuel this a little bit more is we get a lot of fresh engineers. A lot of people say, oh, we’ve stopped hiring freshers because that work can be done with GenAI.

My theory is slightly different. The people who are coming fresh out of college are actually a lot more trained in terms of using GenAI and building something than people who are at mid-level. I’m more worried about the mid-level folks who may lose their jobs because they’re not willing to change fast enough.

The younger ones, on the other hand, can become extremely productive because they’re GenAI native, if you will, and they can already start to perform at what people probably used to perform two, three years into their career. So I think that part, which in India is a very big hose that comes, as you know, we produce so many engineers, maybe a tipping point to benefit India in a big way if we are able to get that talent to really do very well here.

Nitika: So very interesting thing, right? And just as an extension of what you said, I read that AI replaces mediocrity, not talent. So if you really put it, it removes things that are redundant. And if you have a person willing and open to learn, the possibilities are significant.

Nitika: I know that you have scaled fairly fast over the last two years. You have 500+ engineers on your roles right now. The question I’m asking is — what is the cost of speed?

Rohit: I think the key point there is defining growth. A lot of people, unfortunately in India, just come down to numbers — 500, 5,000. I don’t fundamentally believe that growth is about numbers. It’s really about where you are in the maturity cycle of what you set out to build.

People can set up an organization with 5,000 people in two years, but what’s the big deal? I just did 500, right? So somebody can argue saying, oh, I did 5,000. Is that better or worse? Numbers don’t matter. It’s really the maturity of the organization that you can build in the shortest possible time. More time means more cost, less time means less cost. There’s no loss if you are able to build maturity very fast.

At Wayfair, we decided we wanted to build a very mature organization. So we started at the top.

Nitika: You said “do it right.” A lot of companies struggle with trying to convince global leaders of what is right. Where do you think the perception gap exists?

Rohit: I think it’s largely fear of the unknown. People who have done it before, like some of our leadership team, didn’t need to be convinced. They knew what they were going into. But in organizations where people haven’t done this before, there’s fear. Imagine being a leader in the US, responsible for maintaining an organization, and now you take a big part of it and send it to a place you’ve probably never visited. If it fails, my neck is on the line.

Nitika: So you were talking about talent. When you’re building a company — great people, great technology, great business-product-market fit, or just great processes — what is the secret sauce?

Rohit: The base of all of this is great talent. If you’re able to spot, hire, grow, and retain top talent, everything else comes from there. People build processes — processes don’t build people most of the time. Talent is not a one-size-fits-all story. If you can get that talent, bring them in, grow them, and retain them, they’ll learn technology if needed, learn processes if needed, and build those things. That’s what it comes down to.

Nitika: I’m going to ask you a controversial question. What happened with Yahoo in India then? Probably one of the best talent pools globally, but the company still didn’t make the cut.

Rohit: Leadership. When Yahoo was founder-led under Jerry Yang and others, there was a vision. Subsequently, that vision diluted. Yahoo didn’t know whether it wanted to be a media company or a tech company. The final nail in the coffin was the last CEO who couldn’t take the organization in a clear direction.

It’s interesting — we were in a market growing 20%. You had to be a genius to go down 20% in such a market. And that’s what we were doing, in spite of the best talent.

Nitika: You talked about leadership vision. How important is it for a GCC leader to have clarity? Is it one person’s job, or a group?

Rohit: First of all, central leadership is very important. Within the first year of Wayfair’s operation, our CEO showed up in Bengaluru. We were just 150–200 people. Priceless. My CTO visits the center every quarter, being present, solving questions. That’s very important. And then that same model has to be replicated down the chain.

When you run surveys, you’ll see people ask, “Do you believe in the leadership of the organization?” Once that score starts to go down, you know you have a problem.

Nitika: Coming back to people, HR, and AI — how realistic is this? How do you see it unraveling in India GCCs?

Rohit: At par with everyone else. AI is making a fundamental change at every level — in how organizations are run, how people are addressing problems, finding information, improving efficiency. Everybody is learning. If you ask a developer today which coding-assist tool they prefer, you’ll get many different answers.

The key is making sure you measure. Are you getting 20–30% improvement? Are you making it your everyday life? We gave every developer access to tools. Some haven’t even registered, but most have. We’re trying to capture how it improves their work.

People have to do it day zero. There’s no more time to say, “Should I do it or not?” If you don’t, you’ll become a dinosaur.

Nitika: And what about investment?

Rohit: AI has been used forever. We’ve built models for marketing, advertising, etc. That never stops. If you say, “Can I transform this stack to that one 30% faster with these tools?” — then do it. There’s no line you draw. Just keep measuring ROI.

Nitika: We’re also hearing about AI agents and colleagues. How real is this?

Rohit: Very real. When you contact customer service, the first thing you encounter is an AI agent. It’s happening every day. It’s a pivotal moment in the world. What shape it takes, no one knows. But be part of building it. Don’t sit back and wait for others.

Nitika: Beyond hiring, that’s a practical take.

Rohit: Exactly. If I were building an LLM, my context would be different. But I’m in retail. I have to think carefully, not about 20 years out, but about what’s here and now.

Nitika: Switching gears: GCCs. Do you think calling it a capability center is glorifying grunt work?

Rohit: At the end of the day, a company’s work includes high-end, grunt, and everything in between. GCCs have to reflect the same. If you can replicate that slice in a center, that’s the best center.

Nitika: But does the financial model support that?

Rohit: Cost is a function of location. If I only wanted to save USD 10 Mn, I’d just hire a services company. That’s not why we built in India. We built for capability.

Nitika: If you could rebuild GCCs in India from scratch?

Rohit: Start with business context from day one. And stop saying “from India” or “from Bengaluru.” Think of it by function: does it make sense for this to reside here?

Nitika: Let’s do a quick rapid fire. If your GCC did not exist, how would it impact HQ tomorrow?

Rohit: We’ve built a microcosm of the whole tech org in India. If it disappeared, HQ would lose that bandwidth.

Nitika: In the next 3–5 years, what important GCC roles will emerge?

Rohit: A lot more business leadership roles will start being done from India.

Nitika: Funky titles like startups?

Rohit: GCCs usually follow organizational titling globally, so less likely.

Nitika: By 2030, what will GCCs look like?

Rohit: Intertwined with India’s growth story. As India becomes the 3rd largest economy, GCCs will be fully integrated with business leadership.

Nitika: Why the hype cycle in recent years?

Rohit: Because revenues became so big. Companies wanted control, better talent, not just partners. Where there’s money, there’s hype.

Nitika: And will it last?

Rohit: Yes. It’ll transform, but it’s here to stay.

Nitika: Rohit, as a GCC leader, what keeps you awake at night?

Rohit: That my team feels the same urgency as HQ. If a system goes down, are they as worried as the team in the US? Are they paying the right level of attention? The heart has to beat for the company.

Nitika: Beautifully put. For me, big takeaways: solve for the here and now, do it right, and make sure leadership presence and talent maturity stay at the center.

Rohit: Thanks for having me. Wonderful chat. Great questions.

Nitika: Thank you, Rohit.