Good Morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

On an unusually sultry morning in September, I made my way to Manyata Techpark, a sprawling business district in northern Bengaluru that houses one of the highest concentrations of Fortune 500 companies anywhere in the world.

Amid the sanitised sprawl of glass towers and unnervingly smooth roads (a rare sight in Bengaluru), you could throw a rock in any direction and hit a global giant. IBM, Target, Nokia—take your pick. 

But I wasn’t there to visit any of them.

I was on the hunt for a yoga studio.

After a few polite enquiries, multiple security checks, and a short elevator ride, I found it in the middle of a gleaming corporate office that takes “workplace wellness” literally.

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The office belongs to Canadian athletic-wear retailer Lululemon.

Its 300-plus-strong India team supports the company’s global operations across product development, HR, finance, merchandising, and store technology. Here, employees are encouraged to block time during work hours for yoga, dance, and Pilates classes, all of which take place almost every day at this very yoga studio.

Praveen Mysore, VP of global product technology at Lululemon and head of its India unit, told me that the team moved to this larger office in Manyata Techpark precisely so they could accommodate a fitness studio—a feature that’s standard across Lululemon offices around the world.

It also gave them access to more meeting rooms (all named after ayurvedic herbs), more training rooms (where employees can undergo frequent training programmes alongside their colleagues who are overseas), and a large cafeteria (with a salad bar that rivals most hotel buffets).

A training room at the Lululemon GCC where employees often attend sessions with their counterparts overseas

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Lululemon’s Bengaluru office is part of a much bigger story. It belongs to a category of workplaces that have been at the centre of a massive transformation over the last half a decade. 

They’ve gone from being business process outsourcing (BPO) centres to captive centres, to what we now call global capability centres, or GCCs. 

For the uninitiated, these are the offshore units that global companies set up to handle specific functions like IT, finance, HR, or data processing at a fraction of the cost. 

Once considered mere back offices, GCCs have become some of the most influential workplaces in India over the last decade. They’re also increasingly some of the most beautifully designed.

An office space in J Block, a GCC-only co-working space in Manyata Techpark

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In the latest episode of our 90,000 Hours podcast, I take you with me to about half a dozen of these GCCs. I wanted to understand how these spaces have evolved alongside their purpose—from centres of execution tasked with getting the job done to finally being trusted to determine what the work is. 

I’ve brought back some photos and takeaways from the experience. As always, we will take the scenic route. Check out this picture:

Image courtesy of Texas Instrument India

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It’s fuzzy, but there’s an interesting story behind the image. It was recovered by KS Narahari, former director of communications at Texas Instruments India, when he was looking for archival images as part of a presentation for the India unit’s silver jubilee celebrations in 2010. 

In many ways, this grainy photograph marks the beginning of India becoming a nerve centre for many multinational enterprises. It was taken outside Texas Instruments’ first office in Bengaluru’s Miller Road in 1985.  This was the first time a multinational was setting up a R&D centre in the country. 

The bullock cart on the left is carrying a large satellite dish—the first privately-owned one in India. 

Jump to the 1990s. Liberalisation threw the doors open for Fortune 100 companies. General Electric, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Motorola, and many others set up captive centres in India. 

It made perfect sense at the time: India offered a vast, educated, English-speaking workforce that could deliver high-quality work for less.

Bengaluru earned the reputation of being the world’s back office. 

Then, over the years, these operations began taking on more critical work. This prompted yet another change in the mid-2000s, when they became GCCs.

It was during the pandemic that GCCs really had their moment in the sun. Since then, a new one gets set up nearly every week. And while they were previously the domain of tech-product companies such as Dell or Motorola, companies that are part of traditional industries have been setting up India units in more recent times—department stores such as JCPenney and Saks Fifth Avenue, beauty brands including Sephora and L’Oréal, airlines, hotel chains, car-rental companies, and more.

My wonderful colleagues at The Ken have covered the GCC boom extensively. But I was more curious about a factor that isn’t spoken about as often—how the physical workplaces that GCCs occupy have evolved over decades. 

These offices used to be built for one thing—efficiency. They looked exactly how you would imagine: endless rows of cubicles, fluorescent lights, sterile spaces optimised to get the job done.

But today, they look and feel completely different. They are “meant to be an extension” of the global headquarters, said Smitha Hemmigae, managing director of ANSR, a firm that has set up GCCs for over 122 multinationals in the last two decades.

At first glance, this room at the Lululemon office doesn’t look like much. But if you look closer to the right, you will notice that this is actually a mock checkout counter, complete with a point-of-sale terminal’s interface. This is a space where engineers can simulate the in-store experience and troubleshoot bugs so they don’t show up in real-world situations.

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Just a hop, skip, and jump away from Lululemon is the India unit of American home improvement retailer Lowe’s. 

There you will find a digital twin of the in-store experience of Lowe’s. This is an interactive replica of a typical store that an associate in the India office can explore using an augmented reality headset. 

All of this starts with an item most GCCs rely on: a handbook that ensures a workspace in Bengaluru feels exactly like the one in Atlanta or Amsterdam. Sometimes, the specifications go down to the last stitch on the couch or the shade of grey on a conference room wall, an architect who has worked on these projects told me.

With most of these new offices, flexibility is everything. At Lululemon, for instance, Praveen showed me how one wall of the yoga studio folds away completely. When there’s a larger crowd, the studio opens up into the cafeteria, transforming into a single, seamless space for town halls, conferences, or team events.

Two office spaces just metres apart at J Block. Each is designed to reflect the culture and requirements of the company that occupies it. ANSR and flexible workspace company Smartworks have been building co-working hubs designed specifically for GCCs—spaces that offer the flexibility of a startup operation, but the polish and security of a global headquarters

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For the people who design and manage these offices, flexibility means something specific: being able to strip a space down to its bare bones and rebuild it for the next occupant—even if that next company operates in a completely different industry, with an entirely different brand philosophy or culture. For companies like ANSR, which manage these office spaces, the turnaround time between tenants can be mere weeks.

It’s easy to write off this emphasis on design and culture as cosmetics, but there’s a reason companies invest so heavily in it—talent.

These workplaces aren’t just about replicating global headquarters or boosting employee well-being. They are about attracting, retaining, and cultivating a specific kind of worker, one that evolves in step with the GCC ecosystem.

Over the last two decades, the GCC talent pool has matured alongside the work. Engineers, data scientists, designers, and product managers who built their careers by executing global mandates are now shaping them. Once they enter this ecosystem, they rarely leave it.

Smitha explained to me that today’s seasoned GCC professionals look for world-class office spaces, flexibility, and benefits that match their global counterparts. When done well, she says, this has a visible impact on retention. Lululemon’s Bengaluru unit, for instance, has an attrition rate of just 2%.

Here’s an excerpt from my conversation with Anuj Seth, managing director of Alivecor India, a medical devices company that develops hardware and software for ECGs. Before spending the last five years building the company’s India unit, Anuj spent over two decades working in GCCs.

Anuj believes the decline in attrition mainly has to do with the kind of ownership people in the space enjoy now. But a recent report by my colleague Mrunmayee Kulkarni says there’s another side to the story. 

Yes, there are plenty of successes. You hear of units like Anuj’s that focus on product engineering, capability building, and innovation. 

Some have even spawned global leaders like Suresh Kumar, the global CTO of Walmart. But there are dozens of centres where the hierarchy hasn’t budged.

So yes, the offices are gorgeous, the work is becoming more impactful, and the culture feels global.

But the real test lies ahead. Will India’s “back offices” truly share power with the global headquarters they were built to serve? 

Tune in to the latest episode of the 90,000 Hours podcast to find out.

Until next time,
Rahel

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