Nordic firms are more and more turning to India to ascertain international functionality centres (GCCs), drawn by the nation’s specialised expertise pool and its alignment with Nordic strengths in innovation and sustainability.
Some Nordic companies corresponding to Volvo Group, Novo Nordisk, Nokia, KONE, and IKEA have already arrange GCCs in India resulting from its deep experience in IT, synthetic intelligence (AI), analytics, and engineering.
Furthermore, with potential value financial savings of as much as 70%, the nation gives a compelling offshoring proposition.
Nonetheless, through the years, the main target has shifted from value to functionality for a lot of firms, particularly these from the Nordic area.
In an interview with AIM, John Dawber, company vice chairman and managing director of Novo Nordisk, identified, “Seventeen years in the past, when Novo Nordisk established its GCC, the motivation was largely cost-driven.” When the corporate started offshoring transactional finance and IT actions, the first goal was to realize operational value financial savings.
Nonetheless, that preliminary focus has remodeled considerably through the years. “For the final seven years, it’s been nothing about value. It’s about two essential phrases: expertise and scale,” Dawber emphasised.
This shift mirrors a broader trade development.
Stories counsel that nations just like the UK, Germany, Japan, and the Nordic nations are poised to drive a 15–20% enhance in GCCs by 2026. This enlargement can be a part of a worldwide wave of digital transformation—one which Nordic firms are absolutely embracing.
Yashasvi Rathore, supervisor of authorized companies at Inductus Group, advised AIM, “By establishing GCCs in India, Nordic firms acquire entry to a big and succesful workforce to reinforce their international R&D capabilities.”
Why India for Novo Nordisk?
As a Danish firm headquartered in Copenhagen, Novo Nordisk faces a novel problem—restricted entry to expertise because of the nation’s small inhabitants. “All the inhabitants of Denmark is about one-third the scale of Bengaluru,” Dawber famous.
In distinction, India presents a compelling answer. Dawber talked about that with roughly two million STEM graduates and 1 lakh medical docs graduating every year, the nation gives each the depth and breadth of specialized expertise required to help a pharmaceutical large. “So, India turns into the apparent place to search out expertise and scale,” he added.
Dawber claims that Novo Nordisk’s GCC in Bengaluru is a strategic hub that at present employs round 4,500 individuals. The corporate has taken a extra targeted method. Other than the Bengaluru centre, he identified that there’s one other small hub in Mexico Metropolis.
The Rising R&D Powerhouse for Nordic Innovation
There’s a sturdy and enduring emphasis on analysis and improvement throughout the Nordic area.
Speaking to AIM, Kasturi Rangan, head of software program and automation at FinECHO engineering, an engineering companies firm with Scandinavian roots, defined that innovation is deeply embedded within the DNA of Nordic firms, significantly in Finland, the place almost each agency allocates 1–3% of its turnover to R&D to remain forward of the curve.
He added that in contrast to Silicon Valley or East Asia, the place AI is usually utilized externally by tech companies, Finnish firms develop AI in-house. Because of this, India turns into a pure companion for these firms looking for to scale and broaden their innovation pipelines.
Though the early analysis staff in Bengaluru of Novo Nordisk continues to be small—with simply seven members—Dawber mentioned it’s quickly gaining visibility and strategic significance and in addition contributing to in-house work on giant language fashions (LLMs).
This early analysis group is engaged in long-horizon tasks, working with preclinical knowledge, epidemiology, illness pathways, omics, genetics, and genomics—laying the groundwork for therapeutic targets that will take 5 to 10 years to mature.
Past this, Novo Nordisk has almost 1,000 R&D professionals in Bengaluru concerned in international improvement. These groups are deeply built-in into the corporate’s core operations, engaged on medicines throughout the lifecycle—new, present, and legacy merchandise.
The corporate’s mannequin displays a decentralised, trendy method to R&D. “You’ve acquired to kind of see the world as a flat organisation for international improvement, and it’s project-centric moderately than geographically targeted,” Dawber concluded.
This philosophy is mirrored by different Nordic giants.
Volvo Group has constructed its largest R&D web site exterior Sweden in India, the place its Automobile TechLab acts as a digital workspace for real-time international collaboration.
Engineers from throughout continents converge on this digital ecosystem to push the boundaries of automotive and mobility innovation.
Equally, SKF, a Swedish multinational identified for industrial and automotive options, operates its World Technical Centre India (GTCI) in Bengaluru. This hub is pivotal for product engineering, improvement and testing, servicing each regional and worldwide R&D initiatives.
Sandvik, one other high-tech Swedish engineering group, continues its innovation journey via its R&D centre in Pune. The Sandvik Coromant Centre in Pune focuses on superior machining, productiveness options, and manufacturing analysis, reinforcing India’s position in next-generation industrial engineering.
In the meantime, KONE, a worldwide chief in elevator and escalator programs, has firmly planted its R&D roots in Pune and Chennai via its expertise and engineering centre. This world-class facility delivers engineering and expertise options not only for India, however for KONE’s operations worldwide.
Native Innovation Hub
Usually, GCCs develop into a hub for homegrown technological improvements which might be being scaled throughout the mum or dad firm’s international operations.
Speaking about innovation pushed from India, Siva Kumar Padmanabhan, MD and head of worldwide innovation and expertise centre at AstraZeneca India, advised AIM that a lot of digital twin innovation is being pushed from India. “Our centre of excellence for digital twins and augmented actuality relies in Chennai. Whereas India is a important a part of our operations, the instruments and options developed listed below are for international deployment.”
“We discovered a startup right here in Bengaluru that might automate high quality checking to such an extent that it was higher finished than the human and about 70% sooner,” Dawber concluded. After a profitable pilot, the answer was scaled regionally and has since been adopted globally throughout the firm.
The publish ‘India is the Apparent Place to Discover Abilities and Scale,’ Says Novo Nordisk MD on Constructing GCCs appeared first on Analytics India Journal.
