Founded by leaders who have built and run capability centers across IBM, HP, Wipro, HG Insights and AOL. MarSan Global replaces fragmented, multi-vendor execution with one accountable partner spanning strategy to scale
BENGALURU, India — MarSan Global today announced its official launch as a full-lifecycle partner for enterprises building, operating and scaling Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in India — led by operators whose careers span building and running capability centers and enterprise transformation programs at organizations including IBM, HP, Wipro, AOL and HG Insights.. The company enters the market with a deliberate premise drawn from that experience: enterprises expanding into India are underserved not by a shortage of vendors, but by too many of them.
This is not an inexperienced startup entering an unfamiliar market. MarSan Global is built by people who have sat inside these builds — standing up entities, hiring founding teams, running operations and carrying accountability to headquarters — and who concluded that the way most India centers get built is the single biggest obstacle to their success. The firm is organized around one idea its founders describe as “one platform, one team, one outcome”: an integrated operating partner that carries a center from the first board decision through entity setup, hiring, operations and long-term scaling, and is accountable for the result at every stage.
Why MarSan exists
The company traces its origin to a pattern its founders saw repeat across enterprise after enterprise. A business would decide to build in India, then assemble the effort from a chain of specialists — one consultant for strategy, another for entity setup, a third for hiring, a fourth for payroll, another for operations. On paper, each was competent. In practice, the seams between them became the problem.
The outcome was consistent: fragmented accountability, duplicated effort, timelines that slipped at every handoff, and a dependency on vendors that deepened rather than resolved over time. Enterprises that set out to build an owned capability too often ended up managing a web of contracts instead — with no single party answerable for whether the center actually succeeded. MarSan Global was created specifically to remove that fragmentation by giving the enterprise one accountable operating partner across the full lifecycle.
That conviction is captured in the principle the team leads with: operators first, advisors second. The founders built and ran enterprise capability centers before they ever advised on them, and the firm is designed to operate — not merely to counsel from the sidelines.
An inflection point for India’s capability centers
The timing reflects a genuine shift in the market. India’s position as the world’s leading destination for capability centers is no longer in question. Industry estimates place more than 1,700 GCCs in the country, supported by a STEM talent base of roughly 5.4 million people, and India now accounts for an estimated 53 percent of the world’s Global Capability Centers. The sector represents a market of approximately $70 billion and continues to expand as enterprises move work into India not simply to reduce cost, but to build capability they intend to own.
That shift — from cost arbitrage to capability creation — is the defining change in the sector. For two decades, the business case for India rested largely on labour savings. Today, boards are approving centers to own products, engineering, data and increasingly artificial intelligence outright. The talent, the regulatory maturity and the operating know-how now exist to make India a genuine capability hub rather than a back office.
The momentum is also broadening. Where the early GCC wave was dominated by the largest global corporations, a growing share of new centers is being established by mid-market enterprises — companies setting up their first India presence, often without the internal teams or institutional experience that Fortune 500 firms could deploy. For these organizations in particular, how a center is built determines how much value it can ever create.
“Companies rarely struggle in India because the talent isn’t there — it is, in enormous depth,” said Sandeep Kumar Dey, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MarSan Global. “They struggle because execution fragments across half a dozen vendors, and no one is accountable for the whole. MarSan exists to remove that fragmentation. One partner, from the board decision to the day the center runs at scale.”
One partner across the full lifecycle
MarSan provides a single integrated partner across the entire GCC lifecycle, organized around six delivery pillars — Strategy and Advisory, Build and Launch, Operate and Run, Transform, Scale and Expand, and Optimize. In practice, that means one accountable partner for more than twenty services enterprises would otherwise contract separately: GCC strategy, entity setup, recruitment, employer of record, payroll, operations, Build-Operate-Transfer and long-term scaling.
The model is designed around enterprise ownership rather than vendor dependency. MarSan can build and run a center under a Build-Operate-Transfer structure and then hand full ownership to the client on an agreed timeline, with knowledge transfer built into the engagement by design rather than bolted on at the end. The intent is to leave the enterprise owning the capability — not tethered to the partner that built it.
Dey argues that the industry’s operating model has not kept pace with what enterprises now expect from India. “The old model was built for cost arbitrage, and it optimized for exactly that,” he said. “But companies are no longer coming to India only to save money — they are coming to build capability they want to own. That requires a partner who transfers ownership instead of protecting its own dependency, and who sets a center’s ceiling high on day one rather than quietly capping it as a support function. The next decade of enterprise capability will be built in India, and increasingly it will be AI-native from the start. Our job is to make that build fast, compliant and owned.”
AI as an execution layer, not a headline
Artificial intelligence runs underneath all six pillars rather than sitting beside them as a separate product. MarSan applies AI where it measurably improves execution — automating compliance workflows and statutory filings, generating enterprise-grade reporting, streamlining talent operations, and giving both the India center and headquarters clearer real-time visibility into how the center is performing. Because the firm’s own operating stack runs on AI, the overhead of running a center is structurally lower, and those efficiency gains are passed through to the client.
Traditional GCC operating models typically carry roughly 22 to 26 percent management overhead. MarSan’s AI-enabled model is designed to reduce that structurally — not by cutting service quality, but by removing manual drag from the operating layer. The economics are meant to support the story, not become it; the emphasis stays on execution quality, speed, governance and accountability.
That framing is deliberate, said Ankur Jalpota, who joins MarSan Global as Independent Director — AI and Digital Transformation. An enterprise transformation leader with extensive experience across IBM, HP, Wipro, AOL, HG Insights and cloud-first enterprises, Jalpota guides the firm’s AI-first operating model and digital transformation strategy.
“The useful question about AI here is not whether it replaces people — it’s whether it makes execution better,” said Jalpota. “Applied to the right places — compliance, reporting, governance, operational visibility — it removes the friction that makes these builds slow and error-prone, and it makes the whole center more legible to the enterprise. People stay focused on the judgment work. AI takes the drag out of everything around it. That is where operational excellence actually comes from.”
Built to keep maturing
MarSan’s advisory bench also includes Dinesh Kumaar Sharma as Strategic Advisor. An experienced enterprise transformation leader with expertise spanning AI, automation, observability, strategic alliances and enterprise growth, Sharma strengthens the firm’s long-term vision and its approach to building durable ecosystem partnerships — shaping how MarSan positions clients’ centers for sustained growth rather than one-time setup.
“A capability center is not a project you finish; it is an asset you compound,” said Sharma. “Enterprise transformation lasts when it is built on the right ecosystem of partners and designed to keep maturing — through automation, through observability, through leadership depth. The centers that will matter over the next decade are the ones architected for that climb from the beginning, not retrofitted into it later. That is the standard MarSan is setting for the businesses it works with.”
The next phase of India’s GCC evolution
The opportunity MarSan is addressing extends well beyond the largest enterprises. As mid-market companies establish their first India centers, and as existing centers are pushed up the maturity curve — from cost center to value center to innovation hub — demand is shifting toward partners who can own the entire lifecycle rather than a single stage. The rise of AI-driven enterprise operating models sharpens that need further, because the centers being built today are expected to deliver advanced capability, not only capacity.
India’s GCC story is moving from cost arbitrage to capability creation. MarSan Global intends to be the operating partner behind that transition — the firm enterprises turn to when the goal is not to rent capacity, but to build and own capability that lasts. The company begins operations today and is engaging with enterprises evaluating or scaling India capability centers.
About MarSan Global
MarSan Global is a full-lifecycle Global Capability Center partner that helps enterprises establish, operate and scale India capability centers under a single ownership model. Through one integrated partner, MarSan delivers the services enterprises would otherwise source from multiple vendors — including GCC Strategy, Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Employer of Record, Payroll, Entity Setup, Build-Operate-Transfer, Operations and Workforce Scaling — with AI embedded across the lifecycle and knowledge transfer built in by design. The firm’s model is operator-led and ownership-first: enterprises own the capability, while MarSan is accountable for the outcome. Learn more at marsan-global.com.
