Guidewire India’s Next Chapter: Innovation And Expansion From Bengaluru

The Guidewire India team recently relocated to its office as part of the company's broader India growth plans. Celebrating this new milestone, Mohammed Anzy, Vice President and Managing Director of Guidewire Software India, reflects on the company’s remarkable journey so far. He also delves into trends shaping the insurtech industry, opportunities, and the company's role in driving innovation from India, with plans to double the headcount by 2028.

1) Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in India are emerging as strategic hubs for innovation. How is Guidewire contributing to this trend?

The team at Guidewire India stands at the forefront of innovation, playing a pivotal role in shaping the future of insurance technology. In India, we focus on three strategic areas—cloud, data, and application platforms—with a special emphasis on the data platform, as insurance is a data-rich industry that requires managing both structured and unstructured data and applying semantic organisation to make it usable for actionable insights. Our contributions, however, extend far beyond coding; we blend deep domain expertise with a product-focused mindset and a vibrant developer culture.

As a GCC, our teams co-own global mandates, manage projects across regions, tackle diverse customer challenges, and drive transformative changes throughout the product lifecycle. We are passionate about advancing customer success, nurturing platform innovation, and providing unwavering support to over 540 P&C companies worldwide. From my vantage point, the India GCC is not just participating in this journey; we are leading it with confidence and creativity. And this is just the beginning of an exciting period ahead.

2) AI is transforming every industry, but in insurance, the stakes are higher. How do you see AI reshaping the insurtech landscape?

A 2025 McKinsey report shows that AI is already being used across all core areas of insurance, improving sales productivity, automating underwriting, augmenting claims management, powering voice-driven customer service, and modernising back-office functions. The early adopters of AI are setting new benchmarks in efficiency and trust. By integrating AI into cloud-native platforms, insurers can address emerging risks, such as climate-related hazards and cybersecurity threats, while delivering personalised, customer-centric experiences. For example, our product HazardHub utilizes machine learning and geospatial analysis to predict risk exposure, generate peril scores, and refine risk assessments, enabling our customers to make faster and smarter underwriting decisions.

3) How is Guidewire helping insurers navigate constant change, from shifting customer expectations to emerging global challenges?

At Guidewire India, our team of experienced and fresh talent engineers collaborates on global releases to develop cloud services, data platforms, and AI solutions. Our InsuranceSuite product —featuring PolicyCenter, BillingCenter, and ClaimCenter—helps insurers operate efficiently, scale securely, and adapt to changing market and regulatory demands. Additionally, our Guidewire Marketplace offers access to over 110 innovative cloud applications that seamlessly integrate into insurers' ecosystems.

Many of our data-integrated services, which are critical to the insurance industry, are shipped out of India, underscoring the fact that India is not just a cost center but a hub of value creation, where we continuously build and deliver feature-rich products for our global customers. In addition to embracing the latest technologies, we prioritize nurturing talent and cultivating a culture of innovation.

 4) The Guidewire community is large and diverse in India. How do you engage this dynamic community? How do you ensure engineers here shape global insurance innovation, not just write code?

The success of our team is attributed to our culture, which fosters a supportive and inspiring environment that enables the development of exceptional products. We prioritise engineering excellence and actively invest in initiatives that promote talent development and collaboration. This includes partnerships with universities to establish Guidewire Technology Labs designed to bridge the gap between academia and industry, and implementing the Guidewire Intelligent Tech Curriculum at select engineering colleges to empower students with exposure to industry-relevant skills in trending technologies. We also support initiatives that aim to empower women engineers, such as the Girls of Guidewire and ElevatED scholarships, which create valuable opportunities.

Our annual flagship event, DEVSummit, attracts over 1,500 partners, consultants, and students, creating a collaborative ecosystem that enables engineers to drive global innovation. In India, over 540 professionals specialize in cloud platforms, analytics, and country extensions, while approximately 12,000 developers are actively involved within the Guidewire ecosystem.

Looking to the future, we have set a goal to double our headcount in India to 1,000 by 2028, as we continue to enhance our engineering capabilities and drive global innovation.

5) What kind of innovation is happening in the InsurTech space today?

Innovation in InsurTech is reshaping the entire insurance value chain. We are witnessing significant advancements in more innovative underwriting driven by richer data sources; digital-first claims management processes are streamlining settlements. Additionally, the rise of usage-based products is aligning premiums structures with actual risk exposure, such as telematics in motor insurance and parametric coverage for weather-related risks. 

The sector is also embracing embedded/micro insurance, where protection is seamlessly integrated into everyday purchases, making insurance more accessible and relevant. From an operational perspective, the adoption of cloud technologies and open APIs enables insurers to incorporate new capabilities quickly, collaborate with partners, and deliver frictionless customer experiences. Together, these innovations are shifting insurance from a primarily reactive safety net to a proactive facilitator of resilience and financial well-being. In the context of building tech from India, India’s vast talent pool is central to this shift. 

A Bain & Company study forecasts that AI-related job creation in India will reach 2.3 million by 2027, effectively doubling the current supply. At Guidewire, we are strategically investing in leveraging this tech talent to meet both current and future market demands.