Listen

Pause Resume

A significant maturity gap has emerged in how India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) manage employee transportation, with 60% of organisations still operating without fully integrated systems despite the rising strategic importance of the commute.

A new report by Research NXT and Routematic reveals that while GCCs are evolving into innovation hubs, their commute models often remain fragmented and manual. This “operational blind spot” persists even as employee experience (35%) overtakes cost (18%) as the primary driver for commute decision-making.

Key Findings:

• The Maturity Gap: Only 40% of surveyed GCCs have adopted structured, technology-led programs, leaving the majority reliant on manual processes that limit scalability.
• Intelligence Deficit: While digitisation is rising in areas like vendor management, “predictive” capabilities remain nearly absent across all functions, from routing to sustainability.
• Friction Points: Employee dissatisfaction is primarily driven by punctuality issues (37%) and a lack of route flexibility (33%).
• The Hybrid Hurdle: Hybrid work has introduced new complexities, with 36% of leaders citing fluctuating daily demand as a major challenge to planning.

“Global Capability Centres in India are rapidly evolving from support hubs into strategic engines of innovation, resilience, and transformation. As their scale and influence grow, employee commute has moved from a background function to a boardroom priority. Commuting now shapes how people experience their workplace, how safe they feel, and how confidently organisations sustain operations across cities and shifts,” said Sriram Kannan, Founder & CEO of Routematic.

City Performance and Sustainability 

The report highlights a tale of two halves across India’s major tech hubs. Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR handle the highest commute volumes, while Hyderabad and Pune lead in efficiency, delivering the fastest average trip times.

Sustainability is also emerging as a differentiator. Hyderabad and Pune show the strongest alignment between Electric Vehicle (EV) adoption and CO2 reduction. However, broader EV adoption remains in the early stages, representing a significant future opportunity for carbon reduction in high-volume hubs like Mumbai and Chennai.

The Road Ahead 

Industry leaders are calling for a shift from reactive reporting to Al-driven, predictive compliance to proactively manage risks like driver validity and night-shift safety.

“Digitisation exists, but intelligence is still missing,” said Abhishek Patel, Sr. Manager of Workplace Operations at Searce Technologies. “Most commute programs operate reactively because predictive capabilities are not yet embedded into daily operations”.

As GCCs continue to scale, the report suggests that moving toward unified “SuperApp” platforms—integrating vendors, billing, and safety—will be essential to transforming the commute from a cost centre into a competitive growth lever.