‘India is the Obvious Place to Find Skills and Scale,’ Says Novo Nordisk GBS MD on Building GCCs

Nordic companies are increasingly turning to India to establish global capability centres (GCCs), drawn by the country’s specialised talent pool and its alignment with Nordic strengths in innovation and sustainability. 

Some Nordic firms such as Volvo Group, Novo Nordisk, Nokia, KONE, and IKEA have already set up GCCs in India due to its deep expertise in IT, artificial intelligence (AI), analytics, and engineering.

Moreover, with potential cost savings of up to 70%, the country offers a compelling offshoring proposition. 

However, over the years, the focus has shifted from cost to capability for many companies, especially those from the Nordic region.

In an interview with AIM, John Dawber, corporate vice president and managing director of Novo Nordisk GBS, pointed out, “Seventeen years ago, when Novo Nordisk established its GCC, the motivation was largely cost-driven.” When the company began offshoring transactional finance and IT activities, the primary objective was to achieve operational cost savings. 

However, that initial focus has transformed significantly over the years. “For the last seven years, it’s been nothing about cost. It’s about two important words: skills and scale,” Dawber emphasised.

This shift mirrors a broader industry trend. 

Reports suggest that countries like the UK, Germany, Japan, and the Nordic nations are poised to drive a 15–20% increase in GCCs by 2026. This expansion is also part of a global wave of digital transformation—one that Nordic companies are fully embracing.

Yashasvi Rathore, manager of legal services at Inductus Group, told AIM, “By establishing GCCs in India, Nordic companies gain access to a large and capable workforce to augment their global R&D capabilities.”

Why India for Novo Nordisk?

As a Danish company headquartered in Copenhagen, Novo Nordisk faces a unique challenge—limited access to talent due to the country’s small population. “The entire population of Denmark is about one-third the size of Bengaluru,” Dawber noted. 

In contrast, India presents a compelling solution. Dawber mentioned that with approximately two million STEM graduates and 1 lakh medical doctors graduating each year, the country offers both the depth and breadth of specialised talent required to support a pharmaceutical giant. “So, India becomes the obvious place to find skills and scale,” he added.

Dawber claims that Novo Nordisk’s GCC in Bengaluru is a strategic hub that currently employs around 4,500 people. The company has taken a more focused approach. Apart from the Bengaluru centre, he pointed out that there is another small hub in Mexico City.

The Rising R&D Powerhouse for Nordic Innovation

There is a strong and enduring emphasis on research and development within the Nordic region.

Talking to AIM, Kasturi Rangan, head of software and automation at FinECHO engineering, an engineering services company with Scandinavian roots, explained that innovation is deeply embedded in the DNA of Nordic companies, particularly in Finland, where nearly every firm allocates 1–3% of its turnover to R&D to stay ahead of the curve.

He added that unlike Silicon Valley or East Asia, where AI is often applied externally by tech firms, Finnish companies develop AI in-house. As a result, India becomes a natural partner for these companies seeking to scale and broaden their innovation pipelines.

Although the early research team in Bengaluru of Novo Nordisk is still small—with just seven members—Dawber said it is rapidly gaining visibility and strategic importance and also contributing to in-house work on large language models (LLMs). 

This early research group is engaged in long-horizon projects, working with preclinical data, epidemiology, disease pathways, omics, genetics, and genomics—laying the groundwork for therapeutic targets that may take five to 10 years to mature. 

Beyond this, Novo Nordisk has nearly 1,000 R&D professionals in Bengaluru involved in global development. These teams are deeply integrated into the company’s core operations, working on medicines across the lifecycle—new, current, and legacy products.

The company’s model reflects a decentralised, modern approach to R&D. “You’ve got to sort of see the world as a flat organisation for global development, and it’s project-centric rather than geographically focused,” Dawber concluded.

This philosophy is mirrored by other Nordic giants.

Volvo Group has built its largest R&D site outside Sweden in India, where its Vehicle TechLab acts as a virtual workspace for real-time global collaboration. 

Engineers from across continents converge in this digital ecosystem to push the boundaries of automotive and mobility innovation.

Similarly, SKF, a Swedish multinational known for industrial and automotive solutions, operates its Global Technical Centre India (GTCI) in Bengaluru. This hub is pivotal for product engineering, development and testing, servicing both regional and international R&D initiatives.

Sandvik, another high-tech Swedish engineering group, continues its innovation journey through its R&D centre in Pune. The Sandvik Coromant Centre in Pune focuses on advanced machining, productivity solutions, and manufacturing research, reinforcing India’s role in next-generation industrial engineering.

Meanwhile, KONE, a global leader in elevator and escalator systems, has firmly planted its R&D roots in Pune and Chennai through its technology and engineering centre. This world-class facility delivers engineering and technology solutions not just for India, but for KONE’s operations worldwide.

Local Innovation Hub

Often, GCCs become a hub for homegrown technological innovations that are being scaled across the parent company’s global operations.

Talking about innovation driven from India, Siva Kumar Padmanabhan, MD and head of global innovation and technology centre at AstraZeneca India, told AIM that much of digital twin innovation is being driven from India. “Our centre of excellence for digital twins and augmented reality is based in Chennai. While India is a critical part of our operations, the tools and solutions developed here are for global deployment.”

“We found a startup here in Bengaluru that could automate quality checking to such an extent that it was better done than the human and about 70% faster,” Dawber concluded. After a successful pilot, the solution was scaled locally and has since been adopted globally within the company.

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