GCCs trump IT services sector in net hiring for third consecutive year

India's global capability centres added nearly 200,000 employees in FY26, outpacing the IT services sector as firms accelerated in-house technology operations and AI-led transformation

Hiring by India’s global capability centres (GCC) surpassed that of the IT services sector for the third consecutive year as companies looked to bring in-house more of the technology work they earlier usually outsourced and the IT industry continued to feel the pressure from slow growth driven largely by macroeconomic headwinds.

 

Net headcount addition by the GCCs was about 200,000 for the financial year ended March 2026 (FY26), compared to 110,000 by the IT sector, data sourced from specialist staffing firm Xpheno show. The numbers were neck to neck in the last two years, with GCCs hiring 110,000 staffers versus IT hiring of 100,000 in FY25 and 60,000 and 50,000, respectively, in FY24. The gap widened in FY26, showing the growing influence of the GCC sector in India’s technology landscape.

 

The reason behind the disparity is the slowdown in the services industry compared to more robust growth in GCCs. India’s GCCs, which have crossed 2,000 according to latest data from Nasscom, generate cumulative revenue of $98.4 billion, up from about $65 billion two years ago. This growth spurt has been driving demand for domain specialists and niche skilled engineers in GCCs.

 

“Hiring action in the GCC cohort is driven by talent plans that have a relatively longer horizon of visibility, compared to the market sensitive hiring plans that the IT services cohort operates,” Xpheno co-founder Kamal Karanth said. “GCCs typically have a 3-5 year rollout and ramp-up plan for talent and operating infrastructure, as compared to quarterly calibrations that the IT services cohort carries out. It is hence no surprise that GCC talent action continues to remain significant, while AI builds credible use cases and showcases consistency. At the current trajectory of AI maturity, the GCCs end of visible drop in hiring, if any, is a year to 2 away,” he added.

 

While the ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, triggered by the continuing conflict in West Asia, has delayed some decision-making programmes for GCCs, leading to some firms taking a measured approach to hiring this year, those numbers will likely still be higher than what the IT industry has projected for the year. TCS is looking to hire just 20,000 fresh engineering graduates, half of it's typical intake, while HCLTech and Wipro declined to put out numbers around their campus hiring. Other firms like L&T Technology Services (LTTS) also said they will have minimal fresher hiring going ahead.

 

Experts, however, also point out a chink the armour for GCC hirings at a time that they project themselves to be engaged in transformational work, AI centres of excellence (CoE), and AI native workflows. “Why are they hiring so many in the age of AI?” questions Karanth.

 

Analysts say a practical way to understand why the hiring numbers are more is to separate AI capability into four layers: AI literacy for most roles, applied AI, deep AI engineering, and AI governance. India’s strength is growing quickly in Layers 1–2. Industry reporting cites a talent pool of more than 120,000 artificial intelligence and machine learning professionals and more than 185 AI/ML centres of excellence within GCC ecosystems, supporting applied AI delivery and use-case build-out, as per data from AMS.

 

“Deep specialist hiring remains more selective. The March 2026 job-posting snapshot for large ‘bellwether’ GCC employers showed very limited volumes of AI-engineering openings relative to total GCC hiring—suggesting that many firms are still scaling AI through small specialist cores, internal upskilling, and partner ecosystems while governance and platforms mature,” said Roop Kaistha, regional managing director of APAC at AMS said.