Why a Cybersecurity Company Entrusted Bengaluru GCC With Worldwide AI Product Decisions

For years, global capability centres (GCCs) in India have followed a familiar script of cost-efficiency. Companies have hired engineering talent, scaled operations, and supported teams in the country, but major product decisions often remain with headquarters.

Canada-based cybersecurity firm N-able claims its playbook stands out. The company officially launched its first GCC in India in Bengaluru on June 15. It says teams in India already own parts of its AI cybersecurity roadmap and make decisions on products used worldwide.

The company, which serves more than 500,000 small and medium businesses (SMBs) and mid-market customers globally, now employs around 140 people in Bengaluru and plans to expand the workforce by at least 50% by the end of 2026. The centre supports engineering, product management, user experience, security operations, and product development across N-able’s portfolio.

“One of the reasons that we want to invest here is that this is the site that actually allows us to have representation across our entire product world,” Mike Adler, Chief Technology and Product Officer at N-able, said during a media roundtable.

The Bengaluru office contributes to products across endpoint management, threat detection, and data protection. N-able said teams in India already build AI-powered cybersecurity capabilities that customers use globally.

Not Just Writing Code

As companies rush to build AI teams in India, many GCCs still frame local centres as execution hubs. N-able, however, says Bengaluru teams already own features and products rather than merely supporting teams elsewhere.

On N-able’s endpoint management platform, the Bengaluru team is already working on AI-driven scheduling and automation, Adler said in response to AIM’s query about IP development in India. The centre also builds features tied to autonomous threat detection and response.

“The intelligence and what we call co-workers, the ability to start automating and agentically driving, it is actually coming out of this office,” Adler said. He added that the Bengaluru team also works on “agentic soc”, referring to automated security operations that detect threats and trigger responses.

So, once the front is detected, the team can provide that response to a mediation in real-time at the same speed the attackers operate. The company calls these systems “co-workers”, AI agents designed to automate IT and cybersecurity tasks for SMBs, which often lack large technology teams.

N-able’s broader pitch centres on helping SMBs automate repetitive IT work, improve compliance readiness, and manage cybersecurity risks without adding headcount.

The Bengaluru centre supports products across endpoint management, security operations, and data protection, which the company says protect nearly 12 million endpoints globally.

The Decision-Making Shift

For India’s GCC ecosystem, the bigger signal may not be engineering ownership but decision-making authority. In many multinational companies, local teams still execute work defined elsewhere. Strategy and architecture often remain centralised.

However, according to Zinnov and Nasscom’s ‘The GCC Value Orbit’ report on 2,117 GCCs in India, the strategic roles of GCCs are changing, with 39% porfolio having end-to-end ownership of products, platforms, and IPs.

When asked by AIM whether N-able’s teams in India make product decisions or simply execute headquarters mandates, Adler said the company hands over missions rather than detailed instructions.

He explained that projects typically begin with leadership outlining what the organisation is trying to achieve and the business outcomes it wants to deliver. Once these objectives are established, the broader mission is passed down through the organisation for execution.

He noted that teams in Bengaluru play a central role in turning those goals into reality. They are responsible for shaping the product strategy, designing and architecting solutions, overseeing development, and ensuring the products are successfully operated and maintained over the long term. This gives the team end-to-end ownership, from initial concept through to ongoing operations and support.

“So, the teams are empowered here to make their own decisions,” Adler asserted. That autonomy, he said, extends beyond product features.

How the Software is Built

N-able’s Bengaluru teams are also shaping how software itself is developed within the company. Adler said the office has begun experimenting with AI-driven changes to the software development lifecycle, with other global teams expected to follow suit.

“The team here will tell me about the changes that they’re making because of the impact of AI on their development process,” he said. “We’re working to take that into other parts of the group.”

For N-able, the decision to build in Bengaluru came down to access to AI and cybersecurity talent. Adler believes that there is great AI talent in cybersecurity in the country, and N-able wants to tap into that.

The company says the office now contributes directly to global products, experiments with AI-led software development and owns missions tied to cybersecurity automation.

The cybersecurity company reported Q1 2026 revenue of $133.7 billion, a 13.1% year-on-year increase. It reported a net loss of $0.6 million—an improvement over $7.1 million loss a year ago.