Alcon, one of the world’s largest eye-care medical device companies, has expanded its Global Capability Center operations in India with the opening of a second Alcon Global Services facility in Bengaluru.
The expansion is notable not simply because Alcon is adding office capacity in India, but because of the range of global activities being performed there. The Bangalore operations support functions including information technology, research and development, quality, customer operations, supply chain analytics, finance and digital transformation.
Alcon’s decision to establish a second location in the same metropolitan area also illustrates the scale that the city has achieved as a center for multinational healthcare and technology operations.
The two Alcon locations are roughly an hour apart by car under typical Bengaluru traffic conditions. In a metropolitan area of Bangalore’s size, separate locations can potentially provide access to different pools of employees and make commuting more practical for workers living in different parts of the city. Alcon has not, however, identified that as the reason for selecting the second location. This is my assessment having lived in Bangalore and having traveled to this city many times in recent years
Gopal Sharma, who leads Alcon Global Services, described the expansion as an investment in talent and future capabilities rather than simply an addition of office space. The company expects the new facility to increase its ability to recruit skilled professionals and support operations elsewhere in the Alcon organization.
The type of work being performed is also significant.
Global Capability Centers in India were once associated primarily with lower-cost back-office functions such as transaction processing, finance and IT support. That model has changed substantially. Multinational companies increasingly use their India centers for engineering, product development, data analytics, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and other activities closely connected to their core businesses. While Alcon is not our client, we firmly believe that medical device companies can benefit greatly from leveraging technical talent in many of India’s cities.
Alcon’s operation reflects that evolution. Research and development, quality, supply chain analytics and digital transformation place at least part of the India organization closer to the company’s technology and operational decision-making than a conventional shared-services center would be.
For medical device companies, India offers a particularly relevant combination of software, engineering and healthcare talent. Modern medical devices increasingly combine physical products with software, data, digital platforms and connected technologies, making some of the skills available in India’s technology centers directly applicable to global medical device development.
Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi NCR (Noida and Gurgaon) and Pune have become one of the principal beneficiaries of this shift. Established technology industry, large engineering workforce and growing life sciences ecosystem have attracted GCC investments from multinational healthcare, pharmaceutical and medical technology companies.
Alcon also views India as an important emerging market for its products, giving the country a dual role within the company: it is both a commercial healthcare market and a location from which employees support Alcon’s global organization.
Opening a second facility in the same city suggests that Alcon sees sufficient value in the city’s talent base to continue concentrating operations there rather than shifting the additional capacity to another Indian city. However other companies have chosen to expand their talent people and gain redundancy against disaster by diversifying across multiple locations in India. There is no single right answer.
More broadly, the expansion provides another example of how the role of India within multinational medical device companies is changing. The attraction is no longer limited to lower operating costs. For companies such as Alcon, India is increasingly a source of engineering and specialized talent that can participate in R&D, analytics, digital transformation and other work supporting the global business.
