Every finance leader who considers moving work to India faces the same fork in the road: buy a service from an outsourcing provider, build a captive centre from scratch, or take a managed route that sits between the two. The right answer depends on what you value most — speed, control, cost transparency or flexibility — and how much of the set-up you want to own yourself.
Here is how the three models compare on the questions that matter.
The three models at a glance
| Traditional outsourcing (BPO) | Do-it-yourself captive | Managed GCC | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Team | Shared pool across clients | Dedicated, but you hire and manage | Dedicated team, recruited and managed by the partner |
| Control of process & data | Vendor's processes and tools | Full control | Full control — your ERP, your policies, your data |
| Set-up effort for you | Low | Very high — entity, premises, hiring, compliance | Low — the partner executes end-to-end |
| Time to go-live | 3–6 months | 12–18 months | 4–6 months |
| Cost transparency | Per-FTE or per-transaction pricing | Fully transparent | Fully transparent, flexible model |
| Scale & flexibility | Contract-bound | Slow — every hire is yours | Scale up or down; internalise at any time |
When outsourcing is the right answer
Business process outsourcing suits organisations that want a defined service, quickly, with minimal involvement in how it is delivered. If the work is standardised, volumes are stable and you are comfortable operating on the vendor's tools and processes, a BPO contract can be effective.
The trade-offs are structural: the team is shared, the process belongs to the vendor, and scope changes are contract negotiations. Cost transparency is often limited, and moving the work back in-house later can be difficult.
When a captive makes sense
A captive centre gives you everything: your entity, your people, your culture. Organisations with a large, long-term finance footprint in India and the appetite to build the capability themselves often choose this route.
The cost is time and effort. Incorporation, registrations, banking, premises, IT, leadership hiring, team build-out and process transition all fall to you — and typically take 12 to 18 months before the centre is stable. Every hire is your hire, which makes scaling slow and mistakes expensive.
The managed GCC: control without the burden
A managed GCC combines the ownership of a captive with the speed of a service. The partner designs and establishes the centre, recruits and manages a dedicated team against your competency framework, and runs operations to SLAs — inside your ERP, your policies and your data environment. Go-live is typically four to six months, the commercial model is transparent, and you retain the option to internalise the centre whenever you choose.
The managed model is often the right first step even for organisations that ultimately want a captive: the centre is built to your standards from day one, and the transfer is a decision, not a project.
Five questions to ask before you decide
- Who owns the process? If the answer needs to be "we do", outsourcing is the wrong model.
- How fast do you need to be live? Four to six months is realistic for a managed centre; a captive rarely beats twelve.
- How much of the set-up do you want to run? Entity, premises, hiring and compliance are a programme in themselves.
- How will scope change? A dedicated team can take on FP&A, treasury or audit support later; a BPO contract has to be renegotiated.
- What is your exit? Make sure you can internalise the centre — people, documentation and systems — without starting over.
How Finactro approaches this
Finactro sets up and runs finance & accounting GCCs in India as a fully managed service, with the option to internalise at any time. If you would like a sized comparison for your own finance function — scope, team model, cost and timeline — book a discovery call.