Tap talent to sustain GCC ecosystems’s growth

Indian GCC ecosystem is growing at a fast pace. With time, GCCs are emerging as a significant contributor to Indian IT industry. Its revenue contribution was around $45 billion, coming from more than 1,700 GCCs in 2024. These technology centres of foreign companies are likely to be in excess of 2,400 by 2030, if one goes by the recently taken up detailed studies and their findings. Over 4.5 million jobs are expected to be created from these GCCs along with a combined revenue contribution of about $110 billion in the next five years. These statistics suggest that global enterprises’ dependence on Indian IT talent is growing manifold. Moreover, Indian technology centres are no longer working as mere back offices of their global headquarters. Rather, these centres have emerged as major innovation centres for their parent entities. So, Indian GCCs are building products indigenously and catering to the world. No wonder, Indian and global IT services companies are increasingly engaging with these GCCs for winning projects. These apart, many are setting up GCCs for their clients in India.

These are being built on the BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) model by Indian IT firms for their global clients. As more companies are seeking to insource critical technology operations, IT firms want to be their strategic partners in such initiative in order to bag large projects. In a way, GCCs are creating a win-win situation for the Indian IT industry. This year’s Union budget’s focus on setting up GCCs in tier-II and III cities is a welcome move. As more foreign firms choose India as their key tech innovation centre, we should enable better penetration of GCCs across the country. This will create adequate talent pool in small cities along with creating numerous jobs. While all things are going in favour of the Indian IT industry with regard to GCC ecosystem, IT firms have started to see an increase in attrition owing to such centres. In the recently announced fourth quarter results, Infosys management has said that the company is losing talent to GCCs, while Cognizant had flagged similar concerns earlier on.

HR experts say that GCCs are paying better compensation and work-life balance to tech professionals as compared to IT firms. That is the reason why a lot of talent is moving towards GCCs. This trend has seen a significant uptick in recent quarters, especially because each

company is vying to brag better talent in AI space as the artificial intelligence wave sweeps the technology world. As the talent pool is limited, poaching is a natural outcome. Against this backdrop, India should start upskilling its talent on a priority basis, especially in the AI and generative AI space. Although it has been happening for quite some time now, the time has come to accelerate the pace. Moreover, Indian IT industry needs adequate talent pool to increase its market share in the global tech industry. And this talent pool should not only be available in numbers but also should have cutting-edge skill sets. The next wave of growth will come from GCCs in India and the IT industry should do everything possible to enable its fast and sustainable growth.