For years, the story of Global Capability Centres in India was told through one city: Bengaluru. It made sense. The talent, the infrastructure, the sheer head start were all there. But walk into any GCC leadership conversation in 2026 and you’ll hear a different name coming up just as often: Hyderabad. Since 2024, Hyderabad has pulled in 197 new GCCs. BFSI majors, life sciences giants, and beauty-tech leaders like L’Oréal are choosing it as a base for global, not just Indian, operations.
That shift matters, because it tells you something bigger than a city-level rivalry. India isn’t just hosting the world’s back offices anymore. It’s become the place multinational companies go to build strategic capability. And now, cities within India are competing for that role too.
What is a GCC?
A Global Capability Centre (GCC) is an in-house unit that a multinational sets up in another country to run functions critical to its global operations. Engineering, R&D, analytics, finance, and technology are common examples, rather than outsourcing them to a third-party vendor. The difference from traditional outsourcing is ownership. A GCC is company-owned and increasingly integrated into the parent firm’s core strategy, not a cost line item managed at arm’s length.
The Macro Story: How India Got Here
India’s GCC boom didn’t happen by accident, and it didn’t happen overnight either. A few forces converged.
Talent, at a scale few countries can match.
India produces one of the largest pools of STEM and engineering graduates in the world, and that pipeline feeds directly into the technical roles GCCs need. Software engineering, data science, AI, and product development all draw on it. For multinationals trying to scale technical teams quickly, that depth of supply is hard to replicate elsewhere.
A shift in what GCCs are asked to do.
The earliest wave of centres existed mainly to cut costs. Back-office processing, IT support, and routine operations dominated. That’s no longer the whole story. Centres today are running AI initiatives, owning full product lifecycles, and in some cases reporting directly into global leadership structures rather than a regional India head. GCC leaders increasingly hold mandates that extend well beyond India, managing budgets and teams across other geographies.
Policy that’s actively courting the sector.
Both the central government and individual states have leaned into this. Recent budget measures have introduced tax incentives aimed at R&D-focused centres and simplified compliance frameworks for mid-sized GCCs. State governments, Telangana especially, have built dedicated skilling programmes and infrastructure specifically to attract this category of investment.
Real estate as a confidence signal.
GCCs have become one of the single largest drivers of Grade-A office leasing in India’s major cities, absorbing record volumes of commercial space. That’s not a vanity metric. Companies don’t sign multi-year leases for centres they see as temporary or peripheral.
Put together, these forces have turned India from a cost-efficient outsourcing destination into something closer to a second home base for global enterprise operations.
The City Battle: Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and the Rise of Tier-II
This is where the story gets more interesting than the top-line India numbers suggest.
Bengaluru remains the largest GCC hub by sheer volume. It’s still home to the largest share of centres in the country, built over decades of first-mover advantage, deep tech ecosystem density, and an established talent market that continues to draw global engineering and product teams.
Hyderabad, though, is where the momentum currently sits. The city has captured a disproportionate share of new GCC setups over the past two years, and its strength in the BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance) sector in particular stands out. More than half of all newly established BFSI GCCs in India have chosen Hyderabad, according to industry tracking. That level of sector concentration is hard to find elsewhere. The city’s recent wins tell the story. L’Oréal chose Hyderabad for its first Indian GCC and first dedicated Beauty Tech Hub. Novartis expanded what is now its largest global operations hub outside Switzerland here. T-Mobile has scaled up technology and engineering operations in the city as well. State-level support, from skilling partnerships to infrastructure investment to an active courtship of global firms, has clearly played a role in that pull.
Beyond the two metros, a third layer is emerging. Cities like Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, and Kochi are growing faster than the established hubs, largely on the back of meaningfully lower operating costs paired with talent pools that are increasingly capable of supporting more than entry-level work. It’s early days for these cities as GCC destinations, but the direction of travel is clear. India’s GCC map is decentralising, not just deepening in its existing centres.
What's Changing About the Work Itself
The more important shift may not be geographic at all. It’s functional. Engineering and R&D-focused GCCs are now growing faster than the broader sector, as automotive, industrial, and semiconductor companies build genuine product-development capability in India rather than support functions. AI and generative AI adoption inside GCCs has moved from experimentation to operational reality across sectors. And a growing number of India-based GCC leaders now sit on what amount to global decision-making tables, owning budgets, strategy, and outcomes for regions well outside India.
In other words, the “capability” in Global Capability Centre is starting to mean something closer to what the name implies.
Where is the GCC Growth in India Headed
Industry forecasts point to continued expansion through the end of the decade. More centres, a larger workforce, and a meaningfully larger revenue contribution to the sector overall, with functions continuing to shift toward higher-value work like AI, analytics, and R&D. Those numbers are, of course, projections rather than certainties, and they assume the current mix of talent supply, policy support, and global demand holds. But the trajectory of the last five years gives little reason to expect a sharp reversal.
The Bigger Picture
What’s happening in India’s GCC sector isn’t really a story about outsourcing anymore. It’s a story about where global companies choose to build. The competition for this investment is now playing out within India, city to city, state to state, and that in itself is a sign of how far the sector has matured. Bengaluru built the foundation. Hyderabad, and the cities coming up behind it, are now writing the next chapter, and for India’s talent market and urban economies alike, that’s a considerably bigger story than a back-office boom.
FAQ'S
A GCC is an in-house unit that a multinational company sets up in another country, such as India, to handle functions like engineering, R&D, analytics, finance, and technology. Unlike outsourcing to a third-party vendor, a GCC is fully owned by the parent company and is usually closely integrated into its global strategy.
A combination of factors is behind it. The large and skilled talent pool in STEM and engineering fields, competitive costs relative to Western markets, supportive government policy at both the central and state level, and growing confidence in India’s ability to handle strategic, not just operational, work.
It depends on how you measure it. Bengaluru still has the largest total number of GCCs in the country, built up over decades. Hyderabad, however, is currently the fastest-growing hub, capturing a large share of new GCC setups since 2024 and leading strongly in the BFSI segment.
While cost efficiency was the original driver, many GCCs in India today handle high-value work such as AI development, product engineering, and R&D. Many centres also hold global
mandates, meaning their leadership manages budgets and teams beyond India, not just local operations.
Industry forecasts point to continued growth in the number of centres, the workforce they employ, and their overall revenue contribution through the end of the decade, with an increasing share of that work shifting toward higher-value functions like AI, analytics, and R&D. These are projections rather than guarantees, but the trend of the last several years supports continued expansion.
