Our goal is to move from developers to product and process owners: Prakash Kumar, Carl Zeiss India

When most GCCs begin their journey, they start with support functions like IT operations, application maintenance, or shared services, and then gradually move up the value chain. At Carl Zeiss India, the story unfolded very differently.

“We started in reverse,” says Prakash Kumar, Head of Corporate IT, Carl Zeiss India and Zeiss GCC India. “Our first mandate itself was product development. That is the extreme end where every GCC ultimately wants to go.”

The India centre’s early involvement in developing medical technology products, particularly in refractives, set the tone for what would follow. Teams in India didn’t just contribute to global projects; they built products end to end. One of these solutions was eventually commercialised and continues to evolve through regular feature releases. That early success established credibility with global stakeholders and positioned the India GCC as a core innovation engine rather than a downstream ...