

GCCs managed to ward off AI impact on hiring—not anymore
Two of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, a chemical manufacturer, and an auto giant have established internal artificial intelligence (AI) teams and opened centres to increase automation across their businesses, as the technology’s rapid pace continues to upend business operations worldwide.Over the last 18 months, Swiss life sciences major Novartis International AG and Texas-based chemical manufacturer Celanese Corporation started AI councils to identify segments that can be automated. Indiana-based Eli Lilly and Co.
and South Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor Co. have opened AI-dedicated centres and increased research and development on internal usage of automation."The rise of GenAI and agentic AI is leading to greater autonomy and flexibility by embedding new services into software,” said HFS executives Srini Vaddepalli and Achyuta Ghosh, in a report dated 4 February.
[Internal] ER&D teams have been increasingly tapping this to engineer industrial data and develop new features with more specialized software.”AI’s rapid adoption is upending the technology-heavy services provided by the $297-billion Indian information technology (IT) sector. GCCs, or back-end tech centres of global companies, however, escaped the initial disruption and continued to hire.
But new AI tools that can automate finance, legal, HR, and software development-related tasks threaten the workforce in these centres.India currently hosts over 1,760 GCCs, with Bengaluru and Hyderabad hosting 875 and 355 centres, according to IT industry body Nasscom. GCCs generate at least $64.6 billion in export revenue, and Nasscom estimates the number will rise to 2,200 by March 2030, with the market valued at $105 billion.Last year, specialty chemical
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