Mohan Subrahmanya, Country Leader & Executive Director - India, Insight Enterprises

Mohan Subrahmanya is a seasoned IT leader with over 25 years of experience in strategic planning, innovation, and enterprise transformation. He focuses on building future-ready GCCs, driving AI adoption, and enabling organizations to leverage technology for measurable business impact. His expertise spans AI-first initiatives, business management, and fostering innovation across complex enterprise environments.

In a recent interaction with Mandvi Singh, Managing Editor at siliconindia, Mohan shared his insights on how enterprises and India’s GCCs use AI to drive innovation and build agile, future-ready talent.

In the era of intelligent transformation, businesses are redefining success by harnessing the power of AI and data-driven insights. Organizations are blending human creativity with machine precision to innovate faster, make smarter decisions, and unlock scalable growth. From automating routine tasks to generating actionable strategies, this approach drives efficiency, agility, and resilience. By embedding AI into the core of operations, enterprises are not just keeping pace they are shaping the future, turning insights into meaningful, transformative outcomes.

AI Transformation across Organizations

Across industries, organizations are realizing that AI adoption cannot exist in isolation. True transformation requires a unified vision, cross-functional collaboration, and a culture that promotes continuous learning.  Reports on AI adoption suggest that speed alone is not enough true impact depends on cultural readiness, strategic alignment, and collaboration across teams.

Enterprises designing AI-literacy programs must adopt an intentional, inclusive roadmap that bridges the cognitive and cultural divide between technical teams and non-technical leadership. According to  recent report that only one in five young adults in India have participated in AI-skilling programs, underscoring that access alone is insufficient and that structured learning opportunities and language barriers remain major obstacles.

To address this, enterprises are creating role-based modules, leadership workshops focused on business outcomes and decision frameworks, and hands-on labs for engineers that emphasise product thinking and communication.

A shared glossary, immersive case-studies, and cross-team hackathons can build shared context and avoid silos. Equally important is to embed governance and ethics discussions early on, align AI initiatives with corporate strategy, and track metrics showing how learning translates into value across the organisation. Continuous mentoring and visible executive sponsorship help establish culture that spans both technologists and leaders, enabling cohesive organisation-wide adoption of AI.

AI and human-centered design together enable enterprises to innovate faster, build agile talent ecosystems, and turn insights into transformative, measurable outcomes.

India’s GCCs Leading Innovation and Talent

Delivery centers are evolving from traditional back-office roles into strategic innovation hubs by cultivating self-sustaining ecosystems of local talent. Global Capability Centers (GCCs) are increasingly driving product innovation, AI development, and enterprise-wide transformation, positioning the country as the ‘brain’ rather than the ‘back office’ of global operations.

This shift is powered by methodologies that balance deep specialization with agility. Enterprises are building structured ‘capability academies’ focused on areas such as AI, cloud, data, and cybersecurity, ensuring domain excellence while enabling cross-skilling to prevent silos.

Robust learning frameworks, rotational assignments, and mentorship programs promote workforce adaptability, while collaborations with hyperscalers like Microsoft, AWS, and Google ensure alignment with global best practices and emerging technologies. Additionally, these organizations are placing greater emphasis on soft skills adaptability, collaboration, and emotional intelligence alongside technical mastery to nurture holistic leadership.

By combining specialized skill development with continuous learning, mobility, and inclusivity, delivery centers are creating agile, future-ready talent ecosystems. These approaches enable India’s centers to deliver innovation-led, high-value solutions globally blending local expertise with global enterprise demands.

India’s growing GCC ecosystem is on track to become the global hub for innovation, leadership, and talent of the future.

Also Read: How Emerging Tech and India's GCCs Are Redefining Automotive Retail

Redefining Digital Transformation

Enterprises today are adopting end-to-end digital transformation frameworks that blend predictive analytics with human-centered design to ensure seamless modernization of complex legacy systems. Predictive analytics enables organizations to move from reactive operations to proactive decision-making, anticipating cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and forecasting equipment or process failures before they occur. This data-driven foresight allows enterprises to mitigate risks early and maintain business continuity amid rapid technological shifts.

Successful transformation depends as much on people as on technology. Human-centered design ensures that modernization initiatives are intuitive, inclusive, and aligned with user needs. By mapping user journeys, co-creating workflows, and simplifying interfaces, organizations make transitions more accessible for employees, reducing resistance to change and increasing adoption rates.

This dual approach combining predictive intelligence with empathy-driven design creates a self-reinforcing cycle of innovation. Predictive models inform design decisions, while user feedback refines analytical accuracy. Together, they foster an agile ecosystem that adapts continuously to evolving business environments. Beyond upgrading infrastructure, this integrated framework empowers organizations to deliver smarter, faster, and more resilient outcomes, positioning digital transformation not as a one-time project but as an ongoing cultural evolution.

AI-Powered Cloud for Smarter Operations

While many companies have experimented with generative AI, most efforts stop at basic proof of concepts and miss out on real competitive gains. Increasingly, enterprises are now shifting their focus toward maximizing the long-term ROI of their cloud and AI investments through integrated FinOps frameworks that bring together financial, operational, and technical teams. This holistic approach enables data-driven cost management, operational transparency, and scalable innovation helping organizations achieve both short-term savings and long-term value creation.

AI-powered predictive analytics tools are being leveraged to monitor cloud utilization in real time, allowing for intelligent rightsizing, workload automation, and better forecasting of resource demands. These measures ensure organizations can reduce inefficiencies while sustaining growth and innovation over time.

Conclusion!

AI is fundamentally reshaping business economics by seamlessly integrating generative AI into everyday workflows, revolutionizing the modern workplace. One of AI’s compelling strengths is its ability to transform raw data into real-time, actionable intelligence.  By putting AI to work with practical strategies, organizations can help customers unlock tangible outcomes faster than ever before.

Continuous monitoring, governance, and capability-building are key to ensuring that AI delivers tangible impact across functions. Metrics such as agility, employee productivity, time-to-market, and innovation output are increasingly prioritized alongside financial efficiency, reflecting a maturing understanding of how AI and cloud strategies contribute to sustainable scalability and long-term enterprise transformation.