How are GCCs reshaping India’s employment and realty sectors? | Explained

The story so far: The Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are wholly-owned, captive firms of multinationals that serve only their global parent company. These offices of multinationals are reshaping the urban office spaces and job markets in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and a host of other Indian cities. They have added a layer of high-paying jobs at a time when the job market is seeing pink slips and low hiring. Many Indian States are competing to attract multinational companies to establish GCCs in their cities.

But what are these GCCs?

The GCCs can be termed as an evolved version of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) models that were the industry buzz a two decades ago. BPOs would hire employees in India to do the work of multi-national firms on a turnkey basis. The Indian employees of Indian companies would do work both onsite (in the U.S. or Europe) and offsite (in India). With GCCs, the employment model has changed to where the multinational company establishes an office in India and hires employees who are on its payrolls. The Indian companies which used to hire employees to work for multinationals are slowly being pushed out of the picture.

What is the defining feature of a GCC?

The classic GCC models are 100% multinational owned with employees on its rolls. There are other models that are at play in India. There is a BOT model where a vendor builds, operates and transfers the operations to the client. Then there is a ABO (Assisted Build Out) model where the multinational owns the facility but hires a local advisory firm that navigates the establishment glitches. The MNC has full control on the establishment, talent acquisition and Intellectual Property (IP) from day 1.

How are GCCs reshaping the work done in India?

The GCCs are a cost-saving model that give full control to the multinational firms over their functioning. Each GCC is a seamless, flexible and resilient workspace as all the work is done within the ‘perimeter’. There is no worry about IP theft as everything is in-house. This helps scale up Research & Development (R&D) work in Indian offices. The GCCs replace a work environment where Indian vendors had go through the hoops of security, compliance, validation, background verification and other checks and at the same time worrying about IP theft and plagiarism.

What are the sectors that the GCCs are tapping into?

The GCCs in India are operating in AI, semiconductor, telecommunication and networking, aerospace and defence. But the biggest chunk of the GCCs in India are still in Business Process Management. Product-centric GCCs form a smaller chunk and are focussed in automation, semiconductor and industrial sector. A niche sector of GCCs are into bitcoin, cloud computing, Internet of Things, AR/VR, big data analytics and cybersecurity. A majority of the GCCs are from the U.S. followed by Germany and Japan.

How are the GCCs becoming employment hubs?

At the core of GCC growth in India is a pool of talent. A 2025 Stanford University AI Index Report mapped relative AI skill penetration by geographic area between 2015 and 2024 and found India at second position, just behind the U.S. It also found that the greatest relative AI hiring rates year-over-year were India (33.4%), followed by Brazil (30.8%) and Saudi Arabia (28.7%). The AI boom is being tapped in India by GCCs by hiring this talent pool. The index also found that India is second globally in AI skill penetration with a score of 2.5, just behind the U.S. at 2.6.

How are the GCCs reshaping the reality market?

An IIM Bangalore-CRE Matrix survey that was released at the end of June 2026, tracked 14,004 GCC lease transactions over a five year period in India. These transactions translated into “51% share of overall leasing volume by area”. Bengaluru has more than 1,080 GCCs, while Hyderabad has 515, closely followed by National Capital Region with over 490 GCCs. Another study found that GCCs accounted for 40% of the office space leasing in India over the past decade.

What are the operational challenges?

The GCCs are expanding in what are called Tier-II cities such as Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Kochi. This is happening as the rental values of plug-and-play offices in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune have reached saturation point with high rental values.

What has made India an attractive destination for GCCs?

Talent, tax breaks, low rentals and subsidies are bringing in the GCCs to India. “Its strong physical and digital infrastructure, combined with labour arbitrage, SEZ-based GCCs benefiting from tax holidays, and a vibrant startup ecosystem, bolster its cost competitiveness and efficiency,” notes the Economic Survey 2025-26.

What are the regulatory challenges?

Budgetary changes. The Safe Harbour Regime is the automated approval process that operates through a rule-driven approach without oversight for a period of five years. A safe harbour margin of 15.5% has replaced the earlier margin of 17-24%, improving the ease of doing business for the GCCs. Any changes to these conditions are likely to impact the GCC rush.

What is the road ahead?

Artificial Intelligence is becoming a tool rather than a hyped-up algorithm that more and more companies are embracing to tap efficiencies. Currently, according to a Nasscom-Zinnov report, there are more than 1,200 GCCs that are building Artificial intellectual/machine learning capabilities and over 250 run AI/ML centres of excellence in India with more than 2,50,000 Ai/ML professionals on rolls. While these robust numbers are good, it will require an equally robust education system that meets this thirst for talent. It is this talent pool employed by GCCs that can help India transition from a service sector economy to a manufacturing sector economy when the big semiconductor fab sector push bears fruit.

[Research material used for this article includes Economic Survey 2025-26, Nasscom-Zinnov GCC Landscape Report 2026, The 2026 AI Index Report and India’s GCC Office Rental Index (June’26)]