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Why India’s GCC growth is reshaping global talent strategies

September 11, 2026

India’s GCC story is no longer just about how many centers are being opened. What those centers are being asked to do is changing too.

The country now has 2,117 global capability centers generating an estimated $98.4 billion in revenue in FY26, according to the nasscom-Zinnov India GCC Landscape Report 2026.

But scale is only one part of the story.

What’s changed is what these centers are trusted to do. Newer GCCs are taking on product ownership, platform work, engineering, data and AI, work that used to sit firmly at headquarters. That shifts the talent question from “can we staff this” to something harder: does the market actually support what we’re asking it to build, at the pace we need?

For organizations establishing or expanding a GCC in India, access to a large talent market does not automatically mean access to every skill they need, in every location, at the pace they need it. As GCC mandates become more ambitious, decisions about skills, location and workforce models are becoming more important to how successfully those ambitions translate into capability.

India’s GCC growth is therefore becoming a global workforce issue, not simply an India hiring story.

India's GCC market is entering its next phase

The GCC market continues to expand globally. Everest Group estimates that enterprises are establishing more than 300 offshore and nearshore centers each year, with India remaining the preferred destination for new setups.

Everest Group estimates that enterprises stand up more than 300 offshore and nearshore centers globally each year, and India remains the top destination for new setups. The provider market serving that demand has gotten sharper as a result.

What is changing is the environment around that growth.

Everest Group’s 2026 PEAK Matrix Assessment of GCC Setup Capabilities in India evaluated 30 providers across a market where GCC specialists, consulting firms and IT services businesses are all strengthening their capabilities to compete for the same mandates.

Buyer expectations have moved with them. Speed-to-scale still matters, but operational readiness, domain expertise and support past initial setup now matter just as much. Getting a center live is one problem. Making sure it can still do what the business needs in two or three years is a different one, and the decisions made at the start, location, skills priorities, workforce structure, are what determine how well a center handles that shift.

The decisions made at the beginning, from where the GCC is located to which skills are prioritized and how its workforce is structured, can determine how easily the center adapts when its mandate changes.

How AI talent is rewriting the GCC hiring equation

More than 1,200 GCCs in India now embed AI and machine learning capabilities, backed by over 250 dedicated Centers of Excellence and a talent base of roughly 250,000 AI professionals. Nearly half of all GCCs established since FY2021 were built with AI as a core focus from day one.

This is not simply about GCCs adding another technology skill to their hiring plans.

As centers take on more AI, digital, engineering and analytics work, they’re competing directly for specialist talent already in demand across tech companies, startups, domestic businesses and other GCCs.

A global organization can have an airtight case for building a capability in India and still hit a hard question: can the local talent market support that plan at the speed the business expects? That question needs an answer before hiring volumes get locked in, not after.

Workforce intelligence can help organizations understand where particular skills are concentrated, how competitive individual markets have become and where alternative talent pools may exist. Those insights can then influence decisions about location, role design, skills and the order in which new capabilities are built.

GCC location strategy in India is getting more nuanced

India’s established GCC hubs remain important, but competition for specialist talent is also making the location conversation broader.

Tier 2 and tier 3 cities can offer organizations access to different talent pools and create more options for future expansion. But choosing a location simply because it is less saturated or more cost effective can create another set of problems if the skills required are not available there.

The starting point has to be the work the GCC will actually do.

A GCC center being built around engineering or AI may have very different talent requirements from one focused on finance, operations or another enterprise function. Talent availability, infrastructure, mobility and the maturity of specific skills all need to be considered alongside cost.

There is no reason those factors should lead every organization to the same location.

And as GCC mandates become more specialized, there is even less reason to assume that a location strategy that worked for one center will automatically work for the next.

Why newer GCCs need a different workforce model

The shift becomes even clearer when looking at how newer centers are being designed.

According to the 2026 NASSCOM-Zinnov GCC Landscape research, 96% of GCCs established since FY2021 launched with a product or portfolio mandate. Nearly half of India’s GCCs now operate at a high maturity stage, while 64% of site leaders hold dual mandates combining site leadership with global functional ownership.

Those numbers say something important about where the market is heading.

When a GCC owns products, platforms or global functions, its talent requirements cannot be planned purely around delivery capacity. It needs people who can take greater ownership, work across global teams and, increasingly, contribute to decisions that affect the wider enterprise.

That also changes what organizations need from the ecosystem supporting them.

Some businesses will enter India with an established operating model and need help accessing a particular talent market. Others may need support across location strategy, workforce planning, hiring, technology and setup. Organizations already operating GCCs may face a different problem again: how to add a new capability without disrupting what is already working.

There is no single model that fits all three.

Why flexibility matters more after go-live

AMS’s recognition as a Leader in India in Everest Group’s 2026 Global RPO PEAK Matrix® Assessment sits against this backdrop. AMS strengthened its India presence and delivery footprint through the FlexAbility integration, building a GCC portfolio through global relationships across BFSI, pharma and life sciences, and technology.

GCC Flex was built to solve a practical problem for organizations entering or expanding in the market: shortening go-live times and improving time-to-fill for critical GCC roles through a mix of services, advisory and technology.

Speed matters in a market this competitive. But the workforce a center needs to launch usually isn’t the workforce it needs 18 months later. Hiring volumes shift, new functions move in, and a center that started as a delivery hub can end up owning a product or a global capability. A talent model needs enough give to move with those changes rather than forcing a redesign every time the mandate expands.

AMS’s growing India-for-India client base and the tier 2 and tier 3 delivery network it picked up through FlexAbility give it a broader read on the Indian talent market as organizations weigh where and how to build.

GCC strategy is becoming workforce strategy

India’s GCC opportunity remains significant, but the number of centers being established tells only part of the story.

What matters more for talent leaders is the capability being placed inside them.

A center with ownership of AI, cybersecurity, engineering or a global product has a different relationship with the wider organization from a center designed primarily around transactional delivery. The people it hires, the leadership it develops and the skills it needs to retain become part of the enterprise’s global capability base.

That is why decisions made while establishing a GCC can travel much further than the center itself.

A location chosen without enough visibility into the skills market can constrain future growth. A hiring model built only for launch can struggle when the mandate expands. And a workforce plan designed around today’s requirements can quickly become outdated when the center begins taking on work that was not part of the original brief.

India’s GCC market is growing, but it is also maturing. The next phase will be shaped less by how quickly organizations can establish a presence and more by whether they can build a center capable of taking on greater responsibility as the business changes.

For talent leaders, the starting question is therefore becoming less about how many people a GCC needs to hire and more about what the organization ultimately needs that GCC to become.

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