In the last two years, at least 20 such companies including Confabulators, Bridgepath Innovations, Astravise Services, Futurefactor360 and Torry Harris Business Solutions have sprung to help global companies with sourcing or offshore centre set-ups in India.
This is over and above the 20-plus IT services firms setting up dedicated GCC practices or divisions that offer solutions to help set up technology bases here.
Industry experts view this as a growing business as GCC growth momentum has gained with foreign companies shoring up their presence in India to scale beyond just back-offices to become more value-based innovation centres.
“The enabler ecosystem is thriving with over 20 specialised GCC enablers as they see conversations moving to innovation, differentiation, end-to-end product ownership and consumer experience rather than just cost arbitrage,” said Gaurav Vasu, founder and CEO of UnearthInsight, a market intelligence platform for technology companies.
“In recent years, the role of Global Capability Centers (GCCs) has transformed significantly. Companies are now establishing R&D hubs and Centers of Excellence (COEs) driven not just by cost savings but by the need for top talent, innovation, and value-added services. This shift has led us to expand from being mere technology service providers to offering end-to-end GCC setup solutions,” said Rakesh Raju, GCC practice lead, Torry Harris Integration Solutions, which began its full-fledged GCC offerings last year.
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Other companies did not respond to requests for comment.Data as per Akshay Mathur, vice president, Everest Group, the market is expected to be over $10 billion in the next couple of years.
“Over the next 4-5 years, we expect India to continue to drive more GCCs as it is a hub of AI and technology transformation for global clients. Of the approximately 22,000 firms that outsource to India through global and Indian IT services, only a fraction of around 1800 have set up a dedicated GCC,” Vasu said.
Several industry players foresee many global start-ups, mid-market organizations ($1-5 billion) and specialised small and medium businesses (SMBs) to leverage India to build disruptive technology solutions for clients citing a huge untapped market for GCC enablers.
The GCC expansion has also been helped by the policy push from India’s central as well as several state governments to attract foreign corporates to invest here.
“It is a growing industry, and this opens the market for a lot of competition, which is good for us as it validates our business case. We look for collaboration more than competition and see this being a positive for the industry to grow other industries here,” said Vikram Ahuja, cofounder, ANSR, among the top GCC enabling firms backed by global IT giant Accenture.
“Setting up GCCs also raises newer challenges of resources, the talent market, and hence we are also launching newer solutions,” Ahuja added.
Companies such as Quess and Teamlease that provide talent recruitment towards the IT and technology services sector have also set up such GCC units to get additional business by helping offshore firms set up facilities here and provide tailored services.
Smaller and mid-sized consulting and advisory firms such as Inductus are rebranding and pitching themselves as catering to the incoming global firms amid the GCC expansion.
“Though we were into similar activities from the beginning. All these GCC/GIC/GVC (global in-house or value centres) nomenclatures and tags came to mainstream majorly post-pandemic. That’s when we rebranded the vertical as Inductus GCC,” said Alouk Kumar, founder and CEO of Inductus group.
Kumar said enquiries from mid-sized companies have increased in the Western regions to set up shops here with a team of around 40-50 going up to 100 and above. GCC enablers like his firm can help with infrastructure and talent, both of which are available at scale in India.
“This will be game changing. Apart from America, some other countries like Germany and Japan are also looking at India to set up GCCs. The US imposing tariffs on foreign firms could further push companies to set up shops in India to outsource their services or processes,” Kumar said.
“Also, with stricter H1-B visa policy in place, would mean lesser travel of Indian talent to the US. There is also deportation, and so a lot of our talent could remain in India,” he added.
The Big 4 consulting and accounting firms Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC have already begun such arms with GCC leaders already facilitating many large companies to start their technology centres here.
India currently has a 17% share of GCCs globally, housing more than 1,700 such centres that employed 1.9 million people as of March 2024. The segment’s revenue jumped 40% to $64.6 billion in FY24, increasing its share in the $280 billion technology services industry.
