Building Future-Ready Talent - How India’s GCCs are Accelerating Innovation

2026-03-07 · Source: AIM Network · Field: Technology & Digital — Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Data Science & Analytics, Software Development & Engineering · Depth: Intermediate, extended

Summary

Optum's Vice President and Head of People's Team, Amit VH, discusses the pivotal role of Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in India, particularly within the healthcare sector. He highlights Optum's two-decade presence as a GCC for United Health Group, emphasizing its evolution into an innovation hub. India's GCC landscape is experiencing rapid growth, with 1.9 million employees currently, projected to reach 3.5-4 million by 2030, including 120,000 AI/ML skilled engineers. VH stresses the importance of building product management capabilities and leveraging the broader innovation ecosystem, including startups and academia. Optum fosters innovation through an annual "ifactor" event, crowdsourcing employee ideas, and openly embracing failure as a learning opportunity. The conversation also covers the responsible application of AI in healthcare, focusing on upskilling the workforce in AI and US healthcare systems to enhance empathy and reimagine processes beyond mere automation.

Key takeaway

For Directors of AI/ML leading GCCs in India, prioritize building product management capabilities and fostering an innovation culture that openly accepts and learns from failure. Actively invest in upskilling your workforce in AI and domain-specific knowledge, like US healthcare systems, to drive empathetic, impactful solutions that reimagine processes, rather than just automating existing ones, ensuring long-term strategic value.

Key insights

GCCs in India are rapidly growing innovation hubs, driven by a large, skilled workforce and a culture that embraces innovation and learning from failure.

Principles

• Humanity is central to technology adoption.
• Quantity of ideas is as important as quality.
• Embrace failure as a learning opportunity.

Method

Optum fosters innovation through an annual "ifactor" event, crowdsourcing cross-functional employee teams to develop AI-enabled solutions for business problems, with leadership support for funding and scaling.

In practice

• Invest in upskilling employees in AI/ML.
• Partner with startups and academia for innovation.
• Develop product management capabilities internally.

Topics

• Global Capability Centers
• AI/ML Talent Development
• Healthcare Innovation
• Responsible AI
• Workforce Upskilling

Best for: Director of AI/ML, HR Professional, Executive

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by AIM Network.