Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India are growing rapidly. Now they build products, run AI, own P&L, and hire aggressively, not “cost-saving back offices”. The Indian IT services model won’t die in the next decade, but GCCs will hollow out large parts of traditional outsourcing and force TCS/Infosys/Wipro to reinvent themselves.
Table of Contents
What exactly is a GCC—and why should you care?
A multinational establishes a Global Capability Centre in India to build, operate, and scale its products and platforms. Instead of outsourcing, the company brings critical capabilities into its captive centre. India became the global GCC capital in 2024–25:
- 1,700+ GCCs in 2024 employing ~1.9-2.0 million people; expected to reach 2,100-2,200 by 2030.
- 390+ GCCs in India are run by 174 Fortune 500 companies, many of which have global functional leaders and AI, cybersecurity, and product engineering centres.
- GCC participation in India’s IT exports rose from 18% (2015) to 23% (2023).
The big shift: From vendor-led outsourcing to strategic insourcing
Why are boards picking GCCs over vendors?
- IP and velocity control: In-house product roadmaps, data, AI models, and security.
- Indian talent + global leadership onshore/offshore = lower TCO, higher strategic value.
- Digital core ownership: AI, cloud, data platforms, and security are “too strategic to outsource.”
An HSBC note estimates GCC revenues grew ~11% CAGR since 2015, compared to ~8% for the top five Indian IT firms, indicating a growing gap.
Hiring gravity has moved: GCCs are out-recruiting IT services
- In FY24-25, GCCs hired 10x more talent than Indian IT majors, resulting in 20-25% lateral movement (staffing data).
- Targeted hiring in GenAI, platform engineering, and security resumed in FY26 despite some slowdowns.
- By 2028, Alvarez & Marsal plans to triple its India GCC headcount from 700 to 2,000, adding senior and graduate talent in transaction advisory, tax, and restructuring.
Why this matters: Domain and platform expertise inside the enterprise reduces vendor spend. Insourcing high-value work (product & platform) keeps commoditized run-ops competitive.
The AI catalyst: Double hit to legacy outsourcing
Automation of testing, L1/L2 support, and repetitive build by AI is changing delivery models for services firms. Analysts warn this could eliminate hundreds of thousands of low-complexity roles industry-wide if firms don’t reskill.
A “double whammy” for the conventional outsourcing pyramid results from adding GCC insourcing: more high-end work is kept in-house and fewer low-end tickets are sent out.
Will GCCs actually replace TCS & Infosys?
The short answer is no, but they will replace a significant portion of the work that those companies did in the past. This is a realistic 5- to 10-year forecast:
1) What GCCs will take over
- Platform and product engineering for core businesses (supply-chain intelligence, retail personalization, banking platforms).
- Platforms for enterprise data and AI (risk and fraud AI, MLOps, LLM integration).
- The “digital core”—security, FinOps, SRE, and DevEx toolchains—is going in-house.
- Global process ownership (risk, pricing, and merchandise operations) as P&L and leadership duties are added by India centres.
2) Where service providers continue to benefit
- Managed services across legacy estates and extensive, multi-vendor transformations.
- Maximum capacity and specialized knowledge for time-boxed initiatives (carve-outs, mergers, and regulatory changes).
- Areas/units where vendors continue to serve as the operational arm but do not have a GCC footprint.
The GCC market is expected to reach $105 billion by 2030, according to TCS, which frames GCC insourcing as a cyclical client strategy that promotes coexistence rather than complete replacement.
The numbers that should make services CEOs sweat
- Scale: India currently has 1,760–1,900+ GCCs with 1.9–2.0M workers; by 2030, it is expected to have 2,200 centres and 2.7M+ workers.
- Change in mix: Rather than being cost centres, more than half of the GCC are now value-creating hubs (portfolio/transformation).
- Fortune concentration: Strategic GCCs in India are currently operated by 67% of the Fortune Global 30.
Interpretation: Unless they move up the stack, vendors run the risk of being pushed to the outer rings of the enterprise tech onion as more board-level digital priorities reside inside GCCs.
What might cause the GCC wave to collapse?
- Attrition and talent inflation: Insourcing becomes less effective if costs converge. (2025 trendlines demonstrate performance-linked compensation and selective hiring.)
- Leadership pipeline: The GCC needs more principal engineers and product leaders who can take responsibility for results on a global scale.
- Policy or tax changes: State incentives and business-friendly measures are important (e.g., new state-level GCC missions).
How Indian IT can fight back (and win)
- Create “GCC-as-a-Service”: Create, assemble, and run clients’ GCCs for a fee plus a profit share, then turn them over.
- Own platforms rather than merely projects: Provide reusable industry platforms with outcome pricing, such as retail demand AI and banking KYC.
- AI-first delivery: Condense the SDLC, testing, and support using GenAI; reskill pyramids into product teams based on pods.
- Co-create IP with clients: Collaborative product labs in which revenue and ownership are divided.
- Talent arbitrage 2.0: For resilient, blended teams, delve deeply into tier-2/3 cities and global nearshore.
What this means for students, developers, and founders
- Students and beginners: Platform engineering, data/AI, security, SRE, and product operations are among the positions for which GCCs are hiring. Create projects in these lanes that are visible on GitHub.
- Developers: Switch to product thinking, including metrics, A/B testing, dependability, and cost-to-serve, instead of ticket-based delivery.
- Entrepreneurs: DevEx tools, security, FinOps, AI governance, and testing automation are all excellent B2B SaaS niches that are well-established in the GCC.
Verdict: Replacement or reshaping?
The GCCs will not destroy India’s IT giants over the next five to ten years, but they will change the rules:
- Replace: A sizable portion of the core platform/product work that was previously owned by vendors.
- Reshape: Encourage platforms, AI-accelerated delivery, and outcome-based models for service providers.
- The end result is a barbell market, with specialized vendors at the high-complexity integration/managed end and enterprise-owned GCCs at the high-strategy end.
TCS, Infosys, and Wipro will continue to play a significant role if they develop quickly; they will just be very different from the body-shopping era. GCCs will continue to eat into their prime cuts if they don’t.
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