GCC sector
Data & AI Centres of Excellence
A growing share of new centres are announced as AI, data or digital centres of excellence. We help them build the platform, governance and talent base that turns an AI mandate into production systems.
When the GCC’s mandate is AI itself
What these centres own
AI centres of excellence own enterprise ML platforms, applied AI and agent development, data products, and AI enablement for the rest of the organisation. Professional-services firms and software companies increasingly set up AI CoEs in India as their first or second centre.
What's specific to this sector
AI CoEs inherit every other function's data obligations, plus their own: model inventories, evaluation evidence, explainability where decisions are regulated, and emerging AI rules in HQ jurisdictions. The platform should make these the default.
Our platform engineering practice builds MLOps pipelines, feature stores and model serving, and we use agentic AI in our own delivery every day.
How we help Data & AI CoEs centres
ML platform and MLOps
Feature stores, registries, evaluation and serving infrastructure, which closes the gap where most ML projects die between the notebook and production.
AI control plane and evals
Model access, evaluation suites, guardrails and audit trails, so the CoE can ship agents that risk teams approve.
AI pods and upskilling
Pre-vetted AI platform pods while permanent hiring catches up, and practical agentic-engineering upskilling for the wider centre.
The services these centres use most
Recent Data & AI CoEs GCC moves in India
From our India GCC Tracker. Every row links to its source.
| Company | City | Mandate | Scale | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JLL | Hyderabad | JLL Business Services (JBS) global capability centre for shared services and operational functions with standardised processes and AI-enabled workflows | 120,000 sq ft over two floors at Prestige Sky Tech, Financial District; to scale to 1,600 employees over the next two years | 2026 | PropNewsTime |
| Alvarez & Marsal | Bengaluru | Second India GCC including the Digital, AI and Tech Advisory Centre of Excellence | CoE expanding from 50 to 500 consultants (Oct 2025) | 2025 | Alvarez & Marsal press release (Mondaq) |
| Alvarez & Marsal | Delhi NCR | Existing Gurugram global capability centre supporting ~30 A&M units across six continents | ~700 staff in Aug 2025; India GCC headcount to reach ~2,000 by end-2028 | 2025 | Reuters via Investing.com |
Further reading
From Support Centre to AI Owner: Agentic Automation Inside GCCs
HQ wants India to lead AI while the GCC absorbs manual work. Where agentic automation fits, function by function, and how to go from PoC to programme.
AI Governance for GCCs: Control Planes, Evals and Audit Trails
How India GCCs can lead AI without becoming the company's biggest AI risk: an AI control plane, evaluation suites, audit trails and DPDP Act obligations.
Hiring the Scarce 20%: AI, Cyber, Cloud and Data Talent for India GCCs
India GCCs rarely struggle to hire developers. They struggle with AI, cybersecurity, cloud and data roles. How to plan around it, and when to bridge with pods.
MLOps: From Notebook to Production
Most ML projects die between the notebook and production. Feature stores, model registries, and serving infrastructure are what actually close that gap.
Questions about Data & AI CoEs GCCs
How big is the AI talent gap for India GCCs?
Industry research points to a large demand–supply gap for AI and ML roles in India GCCs, which is why we recommend pods to bridge the first year rather than waiting for permanent hires.
What should an AI CoE build first?
A governed path to production: approved model access, an evaluation harness, an ML or agent platform and an audit trail. Use cases ship faster once that exists.
How do you measure an AI CoE’s impact?
By automations and models in production, hours or costs removed against baselines, and adoption across the business, rather than by the count of PoCs.
Building a Data & AI CoEs centre in India?
Tell us your stage and city. We'll bring a view on what centres like yours typically need next, and which of it we'd deliver versus source.
We reply with proposed call slots within one business day.