GCC, GIC… what will global centres be called next?

The name on a centre’s door is the first thing people see and the least reliable guide to what happens inside. Two centres that both call themselves GCCs can have very different jobs. A centre that was renamed last year may be doing exactly what it did before. So the useful question is less “what will we be called next?” and more “what is this centre for?”

This note looks at what the labels have meant, why a rename is not a sign of maturity, and what to ask instead.

What have the labels meant?

Each label put the emphasis somewhere different.

• Captive centre. The term used in the early 1990s for offshore centres owned by a multinational [1]. “Captive” stressed ownership: the parent kept the work in-house instead of outsourcing it to a vendor. Texas Instruments, which set up an R&D centre in India in 1985, is commonly cited as the first multinational to do so [2].
• GIC. Usually Global In-house Centre, which kept the emphasis on ownership. The same letters were sometimes expanded as Global Innovation Centre: a 2018 law firm briefing described “a Global Innovation Center or GIC” as one “sometimes referred to as a Global In-house Center or Captive Center”, and in the same sentence called it an offshore shared services facility [3]. That alone shows how loosely the terms were used.
• GCC. Global Capability Centre, which moves the emphasis from who owns the centre to what it can do. Nasscom’s 2019 conclave material said GICs had become the “new” business-as-usual for companies and that it was “only apt to (re) christen them as Global Capability Centers” [4]. There was no single date or authority for the change, and legal commentary notes that the terms are often used interchangeably [1].

Shared services is a different model rather than an earlier name. A shared services centre (or, in its broader form, Global Business Services) consolidates common processes such as finance, HR and procurement for several business units, is usually measured on efficiency and service levels, and can be in-house or partly outsourced. Some GCCs host shared services, and some shared services organisations now call themselves GCCs. In October 2026 Standard Chartered announced it would rename its Global Business Services hubs as Global Capability Centres, saying the name “better reflects the strategic role they already play” [5].

Does a new name mean a centre has matured?

No. The names are not a maturity sequence, and a rename does not change what a centre owns. The industry’s own maturity models describe the mandate separately from the label. Zinnov’s classification of India’s GCCs, using FY26 data, puts 13% at the “Outpost” stage, 43% as “Satellites”, 39% as “Portfolio Hubs” and 5% as “Transformation Hubs” [6]. All of them are called GCCs.

Nor is there one path. The Nasscom and Zinnov GCC Value Orbit report found that 96% of GCCs established after FY2021 launched with a product or portfolio mandate [7]. A new centre can start with a broad mandate, and an older one can keep a narrow one for good reasons. Executing well-defined work very well is a legitimate mandate.

Standard Chartered’s announcement shows the order in which things usually happen: the bank described the new name as recognising a role its hubs already played [5]. The mandate changed first and the name caught up.

What matters more than the name?

The mandate: what the centre owns, what it decides, and what it is accountable for.

• Owns. Tasks and processes, or products, platforms and data?
• Decides. Does it follow a roadmap set elsewhere, or set parts of it? Does it control budget, hiring or architecture?
• Accountable for. Service levels and cost, or business outcomes such as revenue, risk or customer experience?
• Leads. Are global roles held from India? The Value Orbit report found that 64% of site leaders hold dual mandates, combining global functional ownership with site responsibilities [7].

Two centres with the same name and different answers are different organisations. Two with different names and the same answers are, in practice, the same kind of organisation.

So what might come next?

What follows is speculation. We do not know what the next name will be, and we do not think any particular name is inevitable. A few phrases do come up in conversation, so we searched for real usage of each.

• “Global Value Centre”. We found it used only in passing, as a description in one September 2026 news summary [8]. We found no centre, industry body or government source using it as a formal name.
• “Global Innovation and Capability Centre”. At least one company uses it: C1 (formerly ConvergeOne) opened a “Global Innovation and Capability Center” in Hyderabad in November 2023 [9]. That is one organisation’s choice, not an industry term.
• Descriptions rather than names. The 2026 Nasscom and Zinnov report is subtitled “From Delivery Engine to Enterprise Nerve Centre” [7]. That describes a change in role; it is not offered as a new label.

One more possibility, equally speculative: the acronym stays and its meaning drifts, as “GIC” once did. That would make the name even less informative, and the mandate even more important.

Questions a Site Lead can ask about their own centre

1. What does the centre own end to end today, and what does it only contribute to?
2. Which decisions can be made here without approval from headquarters: roadmap, architecture, hiring, budget?
3. What is the centre measured on: cost and service levels, or business outcomes?
4. Which global roles are held from this site, and is that number growing?
5. If our name changed tomorrow, what would actually be different the following week?
6. What would we need to own, decide or be accountable for in two years to match what leadership expects of us?
7. Do our hiring plans and role definitions reflect the mandate we have, or the one we want?
8. Could we explain our mandate to a new hire in two sentences without using the centre’s name?

None of these answers depends on the label. If your centre’s mandate is changing and you need to explain the hiring plan that goes with it, our notes on making the case to leadership may help.