The story in brief
Genpact’s beginnings inside GE Capital show how an internal capability can become an independent business. A process that works for one organisation must become understandable and useful to others.
Not every founder begins outside an established organisation. Genpact’s history starts with a pilot inside GE Capital in 1997, focused on improving back-office operations. Pramod Bhasin, identified by ICRIER as Genpact’s founder, had worked across GE’s international businesses and led GE Capital in Asia and India.
From internal work to a service
Genpact’s published timeline describes its emphasis on process efficiency and the development of Lean and Six Sigma methods. It later became an independent company and listed in New York in 2007. The founding chapter highlights the commercial potential of a capability first developed for an internal customer.
A process needs context
An efficient sequence of tasks is useful only if it serves the right outcome. A services business must understand exceptions, handovers and the customer’s wider operation. Repeating a process in a new organisation often requires adaptation, even when the underlying method is familiar.
The founder lens
Our reading of Bhasin’s story is to look within established work for capabilities that solve a broader problem. A team may be doing something valuable before it has named that activity as a business. The next step is to determine which parts can travel to a new customer and which depend on the original setting.
Find the assumptions supplied by the original customer
An internal team can depend on shared systems, informal access and knowledge of how its organisation works. Those advantages may disappear when the same capability is offered externally. A founder should identify which parts of the service are repeatable and which rely on the original environment. New customers need a clear scope, an onboarding process and a way to assess delivery. Improving a process also requires understanding why it exists; making an unnecessary step faster is different from removing the need for it. The useful business story follows that transition from local expertise to a service with responsibilities another organisation can confidently understand.
Put the idea to work
Use these questions to investigate the idea in your own context.
- List the systems and knowledge supplied by the original organisation.
- Define what a new customer must provide before work begins.
- Measure whether the process solves the customer’s underlying need.
A closer look
What is distinctive about an internal venture becoming independent?
It must translate a capability developed for one setting into a proposition others can buy and use. The Genpact profile examines that organisational transition rather than presenting efficiency methods as a guaranteed result.
Sources & editorial note
This profile draws on the public sources below. Company and founder accounts describe their own perspective. Our analysis, questions and takeaway are editorial interpretation. This is not an original interview or a sponsored feature.
See our editorial standards or request a correction. For another perspective, read What an incubator brings to the table.
