Build — From 0 to NOC to Global Capability Centre
For Company Y in 2015, the Services team was globally distributed, with just 7 members in India. The goal was to build a cost-competitive delivery centre, in line with peers like Cisco and Microsoft.
The challenges were significant: hiring niche video conferencing talent with low brand recall in India, and cultural hesitation from onshore teams about moving work offshore. We had to first prove capability before we could scale.
We started by setting up a Managed Services NOC, rethinking the hiring approach — focusing on potential rather than pedigree, running walk-in drives, and actively improving diversity within the team. Customer escalations, which might have been seen as a liability, became opportunities to demonstrate capability to a sceptical onshore audience. Partnerships with Sales helped build a steady pipeline of India and APAC work. Transitioning Americas graveyard-shift support to India created a genuine win-win: relief for onshore teams and an accelerated proof point for the India operation.
As the team proved itself, growth accelerated. From 7 to approximately 90 members in four years, expanding from NOC into Call Centre and Business Operations supporting customers globally. The key lessons: hire for potential, invest heavily in soft skills alongside technical training, build success stories deliberately, and scale by riding momentum rather than forcing it.