AI is augmenting human capital to enhance productivity: Tech Mahindra’s Deveena Chopra
Chopra said GCCs are becoming AI-led innovation powerhouses with deep strategic relevance for their headquarters.
- Nov 21, 2025,
- Updated Nov 21, 2025 5:00 PM IST
Global Capability Centres are entering a new phase of maturity, driven not by cost arbitrage but by rapid advances in AI and engineering-led talent transformation. Speaking at The Global GCC Summit organised by Inductus Group, Deveena Chopra, Director for Deals and Pursuits at Tech Mahindra, said that GCCs are now at an inflection point where they are evolving into strategic innovation hubs for multinational corporations.
Chopra stated that the sector has evolved significantly beyond its traditional identity as a back-office extension. “GCCs are becoming AI-led innovation powerhouses with deep strategic relevance for their headquarters, whether in Europe or anywhere else in the world,” she noted.
She also said that the change underway is both multi-dimensional and highly impactful. Her team partners with GCCs to shape digital journeys, build points of view, create proofs of concept, and eventually implement them across large-scale business environments.
To illustrate how AI is solving some of the most complex industry challenges, she cited an example from a leading UK bank. The bank’s core systems run on mainframes that are fifty to sixty years old. With many experts on these systems retiring, the bank faced a critical capability gap. Modernising the entire legacy stack manually would require significant time and effort.
AI and Gen AI-based solutions have transformed this approach. Tools such as IBM Watson can now analyse mainframe code, extract embedded business requirements, generate requirement documents, convert legacy code into modern languages such as Java or Python, create test cases and even compare outputs between the old and new systems.
Chopra said this shift is not about replacing people. It is about equipping them with new-age skills and expanding their capabilities so they can contribute across modern engineering and AI-driven environments.
She also pointed out that talent models inside GCCs are undergoing a fundamental reset. The long-standing full-time employee-based view has given way to a capability-oriented and engineering-led mindset. Roles have evolved from manual testers to software development engineers in testing, from generic developers to AI developers, and from analysts to data science and machine learning engineers.
GCCs want compact groups of engineering talent empowered by AI tools to deliver faster and more effective outcomes.
These advancements are already visible across industries. GCCs today manage predictive maintenance for automotive clients, forecasting and recommendation engines for retailers, fraud detection and risk modelling for banks, and AI-enabled operations across business functions.
“AI is augmenting human capital to enhance efficiency and productivity,” Chopra said.
For Unparalleled coverage of India's Businesses and Economy – Subscribe to Business Today Magazine
Global Capability Centres are entering a new phase of maturity, driven not by cost arbitrage but by rapid advances in AI and engineering-led talent transformation. Speaking at The Global GCC Summit organised by Inductus Group, Deveena Chopra, Director for Deals and Pursuits at Tech Mahindra, said that GCCs are now at an inflection point where they are evolving into strategic innovation hubs for multinational corporations.
Chopra stated that the sector has evolved significantly beyond its traditional identity as a back-office extension. “GCCs are becoming AI-led innovation powerhouses with deep strategic relevance for their headquarters, whether in Europe or anywhere else in the world,” she noted.
She also said that the change underway is both multi-dimensional and highly impactful. Her team partners with GCCs to shape digital journeys, build points of view, create proofs of concept, and eventually implement them across large-scale business environments.
To illustrate how AI is solving some of the most complex industry challenges, she cited an example from a leading UK bank. The bank’s core systems run on mainframes that are fifty to sixty years old. With many experts on these systems retiring, the bank faced a critical capability gap. Modernising the entire legacy stack manually would require significant time and effort.
AI and Gen AI-based solutions have transformed this approach. Tools such as IBM Watson can now analyse mainframe code, extract embedded business requirements, generate requirement documents, convert legacy code into modern languages such as Java or Python, create test cases and even compare outputs between the old and new systems.
Chopra said this shift is not about replacing people. It is about equipping them with new-age skills and expanding their capabilities so they can contribute across modern engineering and AI-driven environments.
She also pointed out that talent models inside GCCs are undergoing a fundamental reset. The long-standing full-time employee-based view has given way to a capability-oriented and engineering-led mindset. Roles have evolved from manual testers to software development engineers in testing, from generic developers to AI developers, and from analysts to data science and machine learning engineers.
GCCs want compact groups of engineering talent empowered by AI tools to deliver faster and more effective outcomes.
These advancements are already visible across industries. GCCs today manage predictive maintenance for automotive clients, forecasting and recommendation engines for retailers, fraud detection and risk modelling for banks, and AI-enabled operations across business functions.
“AI is augmenting human capital to enhance efficiency and productivity,” Chopra said.
For Unparalleled coverage of India's Businesses and Economy – Subscribe to Business Today Magazine