Global capability centres expand operations in India, hiring more IT talent

GCCs are expected to hire around 2.6 million people in India by the end of 2030, according to a report by EY

While Indian IT services firms are currently focusing on utilising their existing workforce, global capability centers (GCCs) are aggressively hiring new talent, according to a report published in The Financial Express (FE). This indicates that GCCs are increasingly taking on work that was previously done by Indian IT services firms.

Last month, a report by Nasscom stated that the market size of GCCs is expected to grow from $46 billion in 2023 to $60 billion by 2025. The number of GCCs in India is also expected to increase to 1,900 by 2025. Currently, GCCs employ about 1.66 million people, while the size of the total IT workforce in India is about 5.4 million.

GCCs are expected to hire around 2.6 million people in India by the end of 2030, taking the total number of people employed in GCCs to over 4.5 million by 2030, according to a report by EY.

Sunil C, CEO of TeamLease Digital was quoted as saying by FE that while Indian IT services companies are facing a significant decline in demand, GCCs in India are experiencing a significant improvement in hiring. Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, a partner at Catalincs, a growth advisory firm, said that digital transformation has become essential to every firm’s differentiation and thus, they increasingly want to build and capitalise on these capabilities.

Ramamoorthy added that global firms are building their capabilities to digitally transform themselves, rather than borrow or lease these capabilities from third-party vendors, given that digital skills are available in India at scale.

The advancement of new technologies has made it easier for companies to bring their operations back in-house. Another industry expert said that customers now have access to a large repository of data, which can be used to automate and streamline processes. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have also made it possible for customers to handle work more cost-efficiently than outsourced vendors.