Mohammed Anzy, VP and Managing Director of Guidewire Software, highlights how India’s GCCs are rewriting the global technology playbook.
In the early 1990s, India’s relationship with global technology firms was defined by potential rather than power. Today, that equation has flipped. As global uncertainty, AI acceleration, and talent scarcity reshape boardroom priorities, India’s Global Capability Centers (GCCs) are no longer quiet back offices; they are becoming engines of innovation, decision-making, and scale.
That transformation sits at the heart of a wide-ranging conversation with Mohammed Anzy, senior leader at Guidewire, who has spent nearly two decades navigating global technology ecosystems from SAP to his current role building Guidewire’s India presence. His reflections offer a grounded, people-first view of how India’s technology story is evolving, and why the next decade may belong to ecosystems that can think, build, and reinvent from here.
“The short-term impact of AI is overhyped. The long-term impact is massively underhyped,” Anzy observes.
The Long March Up the Value Chain
India’s GCC journey did not begin with ambition; it began with trust. Early centers were built as extensions of global engineering teams, handling localization, maintenance, and support. Over time, consistent delivery changed perceptions.
What followed was a decisive shift: India moved from building parts of products to owning entire product lifecycles. Today, teams based here conceptualize, design, build, and scale platforms used by customers worldwide. Product managers, architects, and decision-makers increasingly sit in India, not as exceptions but as the norm. As Anzy puts it, GCCs have moved from being “a piece of the puzzle to the puzzle itself.”
Talent as India’s True Strategic Advantage
Geopolitics may create momentum, but talent sustains it. India’s unmatched depth across software engineering, data science, AI, and analytics is the single biggest accelerator for global firms. The ability to assemble large, specialized teams quickly, often impossible elsewhere, has made India indispensable.
Yet the story is no longer about volume. It is about versatility. The most valued professionals today are not defined by mastery of a single language or tool, but by system thinking, curiosity, and the ability to orchestrate complex, AI-infused software ecosystems.
Designing Software That Survives Time
In a world where software becomes obsolete every three years, Anzy argues that “timeless software” is the only sustainable approach. That means architectures built for constant upgrade, modular replacement, and frictionless evolution. The obsession, he notes, should never be the solution, but the problem itself.
AI fits naturally into this philosophy. As data volumes outpace human cognition, AI shifts from being a feature to becoming infrastructure, generating insights, accelerating development, and reshaping how products are built. Geography, in this cloud-first world, has largely become irrelevant.
AI, Governance, and the Trust Imperative
Despite the hype cycle surrounding generative AI, Anzy strikes a measured note. While near-term expectations may be inflated, the real disruption lies ahead when natural language becomes the interface for software creation and industry expertise becomes the key differentiator.
This future, however, hinges on trust. Enterprises will demand explainability, data privacy, version control, and resilience across the AI lifecycle. Governance frameworks, rather than stifling innovation, will ultimately separate experimental prototypes from enterprise-grade platforms.
Rethinking Hiring in the AI Era
Hiring, too, is being redefined. At Guidewire, candidates are evaluated less on static technical knowledge and more on their ability to collaborate, reason, and create. Real-world problem-solving, pair programming, and curiosity now outweigh checklist skills.
“The question is no longer what language you know,” Anzy says, “but how you think across systems.”
Leadership Beyond Execution
For today’s GCC leaders, execution alone is not an option; it is table stakes. The remit has expanded to reimagining processes, influencing global architecture, incubating products, and demonstrating measurable business impact. India is no longer asked to extend products; it is asked to solve enterprise-scale problems.
Insurance, Inclusion, and India’s Next Digital Leap
Guidewire’s core focus on insurance offers a powerful case study of how technology can drive inclusion. In India, insurance remains underpenetrated not because of affordability alone, but because of awareness, accessibility, and experience. Anzy likens the opportunity ahead to a “UPI moment for insurance” – micro, digital, contextual, and seamless.
Technology, he argues, can compress decades of adoption into years if products are built for India’s volume-driven realities.
The One Skill That Will Always Matter
As the conversation turns reflective, Anzy offers advice that cuts across roles and industries: learn, unlearn, and relearn constantly. In an AI-shaped economy, curiosity and system thinking will matter far more than static expertise.
The arc of India’s GCC evolution from cost optimisation to global innovation mirrors a deeper truth about the future of work itself. Those who can adapt, build trust, and think holistically will not just survive disruption; they will define it.