450 People. 5 Vendors. 3 Locations. 90 Days. 1 Partner.
The Problem
A German automotive giant had built its India engineering capability across multiple vendors over time — a common pattern, and one that eventually creates its own problems.
450+ professionals working across five different vendor structures meant five different compensation frameworks, five different cultures, no unified accountability, and no single view of who was doing what. As the GCC matured, this fragmentation became a real operational liability.
The consolidation was necessary. The timeline was fixed. The complexity was real: behavioural assessments across hundreds of people, compensation benchmarking across a fragmented workforce, onboarding into a new structure — all while keeping the business running without disruption.
What We Did
Full transition — assessment to onboarding — across all locations simultaneously
Deployed 15+ assessors across locations for in-person behavioural evaluations of all 450+ employees within two months. Not a sampling approach — every person, assessed in person.
Ran a comprehensive market study to build a compensation and benefits framework that was competitive enough to retain the right people and disciplined enough to land within the compa-ratio target. 87% of transitioning employees met the 25% benchmark.
Managed the vendor consolidation operationally — the logistics of moving a workforce of this size across structures and locations without creating attrition, confusion, or gaps in delivery.
Ran end-to-end onboarding across all three locations, embedding culture, values, and vision — not just contracts and payroll. Closed leadership roles in parallel to ensure the consolidated structure had the right people at the top from day one.
The Results
Delivered on the constraint that mattered
What We Learned
Remote or sampled assessments wouldn’t have held up. In-person evaluation across every transitioning employee — deployed across locations simultaneously — was what gave leadership the confidence to make decisions. There’s no shortcut to this when the stakes are high.
The compa-ratio target was a constraint, but the market study was what made it workable. Understanding what the talent actually expected — by role, by location, by experience band — meant the framework was defensible, not arbitrary. That’s what kept attrition low through the transition.
Moving 450 people from vendor structures into a direct GCC relationship isn’t just an HR operation — it’s a culture change. Embedding values and vision into onboarding, rather than leaving it as an afterthought, was what made the consolidated team feel like one organisation rather than five vendor groups stitched together.
A longer transition creates more uncertainty, more attrition risk, and more distraction for leadership. The 90-day clock focused execution and reduced the window for second-guessing. Tight timelines, well-planned, are often cleaner than extended ones.
Most India GCC scaling challenges aren’t about whether to build — they’re about how to do it without creating structural debt you spend years fixing.
If you’re thinking about what a well-run India team looks like — that’s exactly the conversation we run as a 60-minute clinic.
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