Leaders | The new brains trust

What India’s clout in white-collar work means for the world

In time its tech firms could be as formidable as China’s manufacturers

The Amazon motto "Work hard. Have fun. Make history" is displayed on an office wall at the Amazon campus in Hyderabad, India
Photograph: Getty Images

India HAS long been seen as the world’s “back office”. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), an IT firm now worth $170bn, undertook its first project for an American client in 1973, reworking the accounting software of a hospital in Detroit. The rise of “global capability centres”, where multinational companies carry out complex tasks, from design to research, is increasingly making that view out of date. The question is whether GCCs will themselves be superseded, too, as India creates some world-beating global companies of its own.

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This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “The new brains trust”

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