AI Drives Corporate Shift to In-House India Hubs

Global corporations are using artificial intelligence at their India-based global capability centres to bring core business and advertising functions in-house, reducing reliance on external outsourcing partners and creative agencies. At a Reuters summit in Bengaluru, executives described a structural transition where India hubs are moving beyond cost-focused support to own critical operations in engineering, product development, analytics, and advertising.

Multinational corporations such as Daimler Truck are bringing performance-critical software development in-house to maintain a competitive edge, while Novo Nordisk utilizes its Bengaluru centre for global drug launch preparations. Target, which employs over 5,000 people in India, performs the vast majority of its technology work internally. IBM, Workday, and Epsilon report that AI allows them to increase output and handle end-to-end product delivery without proportional increases in hiring.

The shift extends into creative and marketing functions. Kimberly-Clark reduced content creation time from 24 days to two hours using an India-built AI platform. Catalyst Brands is piloting computer-generated product imagery to eliminate physical inventory shipping for photo shoots, and Target's ad business, Roundel, uses AI to accelerate ad generation and respond to trends. Analysts suggest this trend toward in-house agencies may pressure the traditional agency model by removing size and scale as competitive differentiators, though some experts argue that demand for specialized external agencies will persist among large-budget clients seeking high-level expertise. While outsourcing persists for specialized skills or fluctuating project needs, strategic ownership is increasingly centralized within internal Indian teams.