Building a GCC: the first ten hires decide everything
Global capability centres do not fail on cost models. They fail because the founding team was hired for availability rather than for standard-setting.
Most capability centre business cases focus on cost arbitrage and headcount ramp. Both are easy to model. Neither predicts whether the centre will be trusted with meaningful work in year three.
Hire the site lead first, and slowly
The site lead sets the hiring bar, the engineering standards and the relationship with the parent company. Everything downstream inherits their judgement. Taking an extra six weeks here is cheap.
Give the first cohort real ownership
Centres that start with maintenance work struggle to ever escape it. The strongest engineers in Pune or Bengaluru have options and will not stay to run someone else's backlog.
Watch year-one attrition
It is the honest measure of whether the centre works. If it climbs above the local market average, the problem is rarely compensation — it is scope.