AI, GCCs, and India’s transformative moment

Transformation rarely arrives overnight. It is the cumulative effect of efficiency gains and capability building over time — until, suddenly, it reshapes everything. Artificial intelligence (AI) is following this familiar pattern. For the past two years, KPMG’s ENRich platform has significantly on AI in Energy through the annual conclaves and also a series of stakeholder labs on the theme. As a community we truly came to the view that AI can transform energy in a very fundamental way. Especially in India's context, AI can help leapfrog the goals of making energy less externally dependent, accessible, affordable, and yet sustainable. Progress, though, has been slow, to the point that it required the ENRich Startup Awards for Energy AI to be deferred this year, much to our disappointment. We have since come to realize that this is not a trend specific to energy in India. Globally AI deployment has not kept pace with technology development. The recent issue of the Economist AI revenues while growing fast are still less than 2 per cent of the $2.9 tn going into data centres globally. The same article cites a recent MIT study that states that 95 per cent of organizations are getting “zero returns” on AI investments.However, AI is a reality. Even if direct returns are weak, AI's ubiquitousness is unquestionable. It was already deep into many things that entered into our everyday lives in the last 10 years - search, travel, shop, food delivery, entertainment and more. Generative AI has added more to that basket and brought a great deal more engagement and capability to these processes. Agentic AI, which burst into the scene since ENRich 2024, is now transforming processes, making them efficient and capable.As with most things that transform, it starts slowly and then happens suddenly. In those terms, 2025 has been slow on AI deployments and change. 2026 will perhaps also be similar, slower than we would anticipate. But it is increasingly likely that in the next few years, AI will reach a point of virality. While it is hard to put a timeframe, my own assessment is that by 2030, large organizations, especially multinational and transnational ones, will see a boom in AI-led transformation. Their operating models as a consequence will stand radically altered.

A related take is that operating models will be centered around the Global Capability Centers, or GCCs. GCCs are no longer a novelty. They are integral to the success of large banks, retailers, and energy giants. What will change is the role that they will play and the motivations that will drive their next phase. Because of the change in technology and AI landscape, the GCCs will no longer principally be about cost arbitrage. They will be much more around organizational growth, operations, service delivery, or even the organization's survival. India is at a unique place. It is a junction where many tracks come together – whether that be talent, technology, scale, markets – and GCCs are a key station for that. India already attracts 50 per cent of new GCCs. Going forward, the question will not just be about setting up new centers, but about creating the new through these centers — innovation, products, and models that reshape industries worldwide.

But to remind us, while that change happens for those global organizations because of the change in technology and India's attractiveness in that context, India cannot forget its own needs. On energy, we remain vulnerable on affordability, accessibility, sustainability, all of which create major impediments to growth and severe security concerns. The best bet for India would be that these two tracks -- India serving the world through the GCCs, and India developing technology and service models for India -- run in parallel but converge at times. They can learn from each other, share, and accelerate organizational and societal gains. It is a journey that can be truly exceptional for India and for the world.

Government of India has been proactive in addressing some of the deficits on AI-led innovation and also in supporting the GCC transformation. On innovation, a key measure was to establish the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) which seeks to create platforms for fundamental work on key themes including Energy AI along with other arms of the government, industry and academia. The change that the country seeks will require the forces to come together, including convening platforms like ENRich and ENRich Labs to realise these immense possibilities.

(The author is Anish De, Global Head – Energy, Natural Resources & Chemicals (ENRC), KPMG International. Views are personal.)