India: From IT to GCC hub

Roughly 60 percent of the top 500 global companies have set up GCCs in India, according to the 2024 annual report of Inductus, a GCC enabler. These centres are expected to add jobs at a faster rate than the large IT services companies

By Brian Carvalho Editor, Forbes India

Published: Feb 19, 2025 10:38:22 AM IST

Updated: Feb 19, 2025 10:44:45 AM IST

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The snowballing spirit of innovation within the country and a bustling startup culture coupled with the sharp focus on new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and cloud computing are what’s driving global capability centres (GCC) action today.

The facts and figures are astounding: Roughly 60 percent of the top 500 global companies have set up GCCs in India, according to the 2024 annual report of Inductus, a GCC enabler.

These centres are expected to add jobs at a faster rate than the large IT services companies. A year ago, industry body Nasscom had projected that IT services will create only 60,000 jobs in fiscal year 2024, way lower than 270,000 jobs in the previous fiscal year. (The outlook for 2025, however, is more promising.)

The trend of GCC hiring overtaking that of IT services is a fairly recent one. According to Shrirang Raddi from Infosys’s client solutions, the “major tipping point was in 2023, when the combined manpower hiring by GCCs exceeded the hiring made by leading IT services consultancies”. These include both lateral and fresh hires.

“Today, large GCCs have strong hiring engines and are competing with services firms for talent. That is good news for anyone working in technology,” wrote Raddi recently on the Nasscom community portal.

India has some 1,700 GCCs; the number is expected to cross 2,000 before 2030. More than the numbers, though, it’s how these outposts have evolved. Till recently, the major drivers for global giants to set up GCCs in India was costs—which are lower by between 40 percent and 70 percent vis-à-vis developed nations.

Real estate and utility costs, for instance, are lower in cities like Jaipur and Hyderabad than in global tech hubs. Many GCCs, in sectors like health care and fintech, have become hubs for high-value research and development, in collaborations with Indian universities and institutions.

This Forbes India edition is all about GCCs—what Forbes India’s Technology & Innovation Editor Harichandan Arakali terms the ‘Innovation Coalition’.

“India has the opportunity to become the trusted partner in a multilateral coalition for hi-tech talent,” writes Arakali, who met some 12 GCC heads to put together this comprehensive package.

GCCs in India are across a multitude of sectors, from pharma, financial services and automotive to chip-making, business analytics and software.

The biggest piece of the GCC pie would easily be engineering R&D services; they accounted for $36.4 billion of the total GCC exports of $64.6 billion in fiscal year 2024, according to a September 2024 report commissioned by Nasscom and put together by consultancy Zinnov. GCC exports are projected to hit $105 billion by 2030.

Clearly, the age of the true-blue, value-driven India-headquartered GCC has arrived. For a ringside view of the action, dive into this special GCC package.

On the cover of this edition is a man who never says die. Ajay Singh bought the defunct ModiLuft two decades ago, and rechristened it SpiceJet. “People told me, ‘you’re completely nuts’,” Singh had told Forbes India in October 2020. His detractors may still think he’s crazy, with one wondering how SpiceJet can survive the current crisis with just 17 aircraft. More, piled up losses are eating into the airline’s net worth. Can Singh pull off yet another comeback? “This is an airline that refuses to die,” he tells Rajiv Singh. For more on the turnaround script, turn to Singh’s ‘The Survivor’.

Best,

Brian Carvalho

Editor, Forbes India

Email: Brian.Carvalho@nw18.com

X ID: @Brianc_Ed