New Delhi
In the first half of this year, India witnessed the establishment of 10 Global Capability Centers (GCCs), with nearly 83 percent of them focusing on three key functional areas: engineering R&D, IT, and Business Process Management (BPM). As of FY2023, India was home to more than 1,580 GCCs, employing over 1.66 million professionals, with a total market size of $46 billion, and showing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.4 percent. The GCC segment has not only expanded in terms of scale but also in value. Interestingly, around 55 percent of the new GCCs established this year have chosen locations other than Bengaluru for their operations. Tier 2 cities such as Vadodara, Nasik, and Coimbatore have seen the expansion of centers for established GCCs, particularly in sectors like industrial, FMCG, retail, electrical and electronics, and software and internet. Sukanya Roy, Head of GCC and BPM at Nasscom, highlighted India’s positioning as a premier hub for GCCs due to its digitally skilled talent pool, strategic location, visionary leadership, and operational excellence. Key drivers that make India an attractive destination for setting up and expanding GCCs include its technological capabilities to drive innovation, the availability of highly skilled digital talent, a mature tech startup ecosystem, and a well-established GCC ecosystem.In the automotive and aerospace sectors, the shift from hardware-centric to software-led engineering has broadened the role of India’s centers, noted Mohammed Faraz Khan, Partner at Zinnov. He also emphasized that India’s contribution to GCC innovation in these industries has extended beyond Tier 1 cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune to include Tier 2 cities.
