India becomes world's largest retail GCC hub with 180 centres: Report

Retail GCCs in India now employ over 0.27 million professionals, with hiring increasingly shifting towards AI, engineering and supply chain roles, a report said

India has emerged as the world's largest hub for retail and consumer global capability centres (GCCs), hosting 180 centres and employing about 272,300 professionals, according to a report by TeamLease Digital released on Wednesday.

 

The report said India's retail GCC ecosystem is now 34 per cent larger than the next five global peer markets combined, making it the only location with the scale to support enterprise-wide retail operations.

 

It also said global retailers are increasingly assigning India responsibilities beyond traditional shared services, with local teams taking ownership of technology platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), product engineering, digital commerce, supply chain transformation, and data-led operations.

   

India's retail GCC ecosystem has shifted from a scale-driven model to one centred on capabilities, it added.

Hiring demand shifts towards AI-led capabilities

Technology, customer, and supply chain functions currently account for around 60 per cent of the retail GCC workforce but are expected to contribute more than 80 per cent of hiring demand by 2028, the report said.

 

Technology and engineering demand is projected to rise from about 25,140 positions in 2025 to nearly 41,000 by 2028, while data and analytics are expected to be the fastest-growing function over the period, the TeamLease Digital report said.

 

The report further said demand is growing rapidly for skills such as large language model (LLM) engineering, GenAI operations, MLOps, and vector databases.

 

At the same time, manual and process-driven skills, including spreadsheet-based planning, manual quality assurance testing, and rule-based analytics, are witnessing a decline as automation expands across retail operations, it said.

AI talent remains in short supply

While AI penetration in India's retail GCC workforce has more than doubled from 2.1 per cent in 2022 to 4.8 per cent in 2025 and is expected to reach 7.2 per cent this year, the report said the supply of experienced professionals remains limited.

 

According to the report, only 320 professionals with more than eight years of AI experience are employed across all 180 retail GCCs, averaging fewer than two senior AI specialists per centre.

 

Bengaluru accounts for 54 per cent of the country's AI talent pool in the segment, while Hyderabad is emerging as a secondary hub for AI hiring.

Retail GCCs recruit beyond the retail sector

The report estimated that retail GCCs hired about 28,500 professionals over the past year, with more than 90 per cent coming from outside the retail industry.

 

Information technology (IT) services accounted for 17.5 per cent of these hires, followed by product companies at 14 per cent and business consulting firms at 10.5 per cent, indicating that retailers are competing with technology companies for specialised digital talent, the report said.

 

Attrition continues to remain elevated among early-career employees, reaching 25 per cent in the one-to-two-year experience bracket, while finance functions recorded the highest churn among business functions, according to the report.

Capability, not scale, will define the next phase

Neeti Sharma, chief executive officer of TeamLease Digital, said: "India's retail GCC story has moved decisively past the conversation about scale. India is increasingly becoming the place where AI-led retail strategy gets built and owned, not just executed."

 

The report identified AI talent shortages, the concentration of skilled professionals in a few cities, and leadership bottlenecks as the principal constraints to the sector's next phase of growth. It said companies would need to expand AI capabilities, diversify hiring beyond Bengaluru, and strengthen early-career talent pipelines to sustain the sector's growth trajectory.