Alkami Turns to Delhi-NCR for AI-Led Banking Reinvention

Bengaluru may still be the centre of gravity for India’s technology talent, but it is no longer the only city shaping global capability strategies. As companies reassess where and how they build teams, Delhi-NCR is gaining prominence. For firms like Alkami, the region represents an equally strong—if often underleveraged—destination, especially for fintech innovation.

This shift is part of a larger trend. Delhi-NCR is now home to nearly 280 global capability centres (GCCs), a growth driven by its ability to combine deep technology expertise with strategic corporate functions.

Unlike traditional tech hubs, the region offers a multidisciplinary talent pool that spans product engineering as well as critical domains such as policy, finance, and legal research. This advantage that has attracted global giants like Google, Adobe, and Uber, all of whom are leveraging the region for more than just backend operations.

The momentum is only accelerating. Companies such as S&P Global, United Airlines, Elevance Health, and Palo Alto Networks are expanding their presence, reinforcing Delhi-NCR’s emergence as a preferred destination for globally integrated, high-value capability centres.

“While Bengaluru and Hyderabad remain the primary engines of India’s digital economy, Delhi-NCR has emerged as a compelling alternative,” Alouk Kumar, CEO of Inductus Group, tells AIM. What sets the region apart, he adds, is its position as India’s political and regulatory epicentre, an advantage that becomes particularly relevant for sectors like BFSI and healthcare, where proximity to government bodies and regulators can be critical.

Delhi-NCR has long been an important hub for the BFSI sector, but companies are choosing the region to solve a different kind of problem. 

The part people often miss is the leadership layer, Piyush Kedia, CEO of InCommon, tells AIM. “Finding a site lead who can run a 200-person centre, own a P&L, and present to a board—that candidate pool is deeper in NCR for business-side roles.”

If Bengaluru is known for building engineering leaders, NCR is emerging as a centre for professionals who can run centres as businesses.

That distinction played out clearly in Alkami’s own assessment of the region. “We really do have good fintech and banking experience talent here,” Manoj Kumar, VP of Data Engineering and Country Head, India at Alkami, tells AIM.

“We met talent across three levels,” Deep Varma, CTO, Alkami, adds. “What stood out was both the depth and breadth available in the NCR region.”

Cost, congestion, and talent saturation in southern hubs also played important roles.

“The region benefits from a large talent pipeline, a leading education centre producing a high number of graduates, and a sizable base of finance and accounting professionals. Of the approximately 6,00,000 professionals employed in financial services (FS) GCCs nationwide, around 18% (nearly 1,00,000) are based in NCR, making it a significant GCC talent pool. About 60-65% of roles are in operations, and 35% in technology,” Manoj Marwah, GCCs Markets Leader for EY in India, reveals in a conversation.

On the operations side, he adds, GCC roles in NCR primarily focus on core operations, credit underwriting, risk management, analytics, voice-based services, and customer management, covering the complete financial services lifecycle from onboarding and KYC to servicing. At the same time, there is a growing volume of technology work happening at FS GCCs out of NCR, including engineering and application development, product management, and UI/UX design.

Varma mentions that the company is moving beyond traditional digital banking models to what it calls anticipatory banking.

“That means we need to have a platform which can understand the customer needs before they know what they want,” Varma explains.

In that move, India is becoming central to its AI and product engineering roadmap.

“We as a company are going to adopt agentic AI and AI workflows in our development cycles, and India is going to play a critical role in that,” Kumar mentions.

Its India team will lead experimentation, proofs of concept, and eventually drive large parts of AI-led transformation, particularly in data intelligence and platform engineering.

The company is building this vision across three key pillars: onboarding, digital engagement, and data-driven marketing. AI sits at the centre of this transformation.

“What we are going to see is an average consumer is going to start having a conversation when they want to do the transactions rather than logging into an app,” Varma adds. “The agents will come in, and you will just interact with the agents.”

AI Focus: Productivity, Platforms, and Customer Intelligence

Alkami’s AI investments are currently focused across two key areas that balance operational efficiency with external innovation. 

Internally, the company is leveraging AI to drive productivity gains across functions such as software development, HR, and legal workflows, streamlining processes and reducing manual effort. 

At the same time, the company is investing in open architecture and extensibility, allowing third-party integrations and faster innovation on its platform.

From Cost Arbitrage to Capability Leadership

Alkami’s leadership believes India’s role in the global technology ecosystem has undergone a fundamental shift—from execution-led delivery to true capability ownership. “The model has changed now. The talent in India… can tell us what needs to be done,” Varma says.

This evolution is being powered by a unique convergence of strengths: large-scale digital infrastructure, particularly in payments, a thriving startup ecosystem, and a young, skilled workforce. “When you combine talent… and digitisation… India is leading the payment industry… makes… finding the talent much easier,” he adds.

While fintech has historically been slower to adopt emerging technologies due to regulatory constraints, that inertia is rapidly fading. “Either you change yourself… or you will be moved out,” Kumar says, pointing to mounting pressure from boards and leadership teams in the US. This urgency is pushing global firms to tap into India’s talent pool to accelerate transformation at speed.

Building an Innovation Hub

Alkami plans to grow its India GCC from 140 employees to 250 by the end of the year, prioritising experienced hires in the near term while planning to expand through campus hiring over time. “We are really looking for fintech talent to build our strategic capability,” Julie Hoagland, CHRO, Alkami, mentions.

The long-term ambition is to move decisively beyond a support model to establish a full-fledged innovation hub.