Young Indian leaders are brimming with national pride and global ambition
I am impressed by the national pride and global ambition of young Indian leaders like Arunkumar Kamalakannan
Arun is SVP of Global Engineering *AND* Head of India at Integrate, a lead management software company based in Phoenix, AZ.
In the sentence above, I emphasize *AND*. Let me elaborate why:
I met Arun at the recent GCC Next Summit 2024 in Chennai.
Arun told me that when Integrate recruited him in 2021 to set up their first-ever Global Capability Center (GCC) in Chennai, India, he explicitly told them that this India center will not be used to execute low-cost IT work, but lead high-end R&D projects for Integrate.
Integrate accepted Arun’s request.
As Arun explains himself in his LinkedIn profile:
“Dec 2021 — Nov 2023: Joined as the first employee in India (of Integrate) and the story began to build this GCC (Global Capability Centre).
It has been a great journey in building India org from 0 to 180+ employees which majorly represented by R&D and few operations roles.
Playing MD (Managing Director) role for India operations, building office space, excellent culture for the R&D department, making global organisation to achieve profitability goal.
Making India a strategic centre and not just to treat as low cost centre.”
Within 2 years, Arun succeeded in establishing Integrate’s Indian GCC as a world-leading R&D hub.
But that’s just the first part of Arun’s career evolution.
In Nov 2023, Arun was promoted to the role of SVP, Global Engineering at Integrate.
Arun now heads globally all functions of Product Engineering that includes Product Development, Core Platform services, DevOps, Data Engineering and Security.
Arun told me the “GLOBAL” in his title is vital for him.
It sends a strong signal to young IT professionals that if they join GCCs in India, they can — just like Arun — rise through the ranks to assume a GLOBAL LEADERSHIP role in forward-thinking organizations like Integrate.
According to EY :
- India’s GCC market size will reach US$110 billion by 2030
- India will have +2400 GCCs
- These GCCs will employ 4.5 million people
All these numbers talk about VOLUME and assume that “bigger is better”
But Arun reminded me, to become a global IT leader, India needs to shift its marketing and positioning from VOLUME (based on labor arbitrage) to VALUE (based on the deep innovation and leadership capabilities available in India)
Hindustan Unilever (HUL), the Indian unit of global consumer brand Unilever, is known as the “CEO Factory” as it produces top-notch managers who go on to lead large national firms and MNCs.
Here is my wish:
As more Aruns emerge from India-based GCCs assuming global responsibilities, I would like India-based GCCs to be known as the “CXO Factories” by 2035.
