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When ~50 new Global Capability Centers (GCCs) opened in India in just the first two quarters of CY2025, it reaffirmed what the world had already accepted by 2024 year-end: “India had become the GCC Capital of the World.”
And honestly, you can feel that shift in every conversation we’re having with global leaders this year.
The “Why India?” question, the one we’ve been hearing for a decade, is gone. In its place is a new one: “What more can we do from India?”
Bengaluru and Hyderabad continue to dominate new setups, together accounting for the lion’s share of 2025’s activity. (As I write this, five new GCCs are being set up in Hyderabad alone.)
Pune and NCR are close behind, expanding fast, especially across digital, product, and engineering portfolios.
And it’s not just the numbers that tell the story, it’s the nature of what’s being built. The Mid-market segment gained speed, setting up transformation-led centers with product ownership, while a growing set of large enterprises scaled into the Mega GCC bracket, running entire portfolios from India.
That’s what makes 2025 different. The foundation was already there; this was the phase when the ecosystem began to act like what it had become, a global catalyst.
With over 1.9 Mn professionals powering global engineering, AI, and product mandates, India’s GCC ecosystem reached a level of maturity in 2025 that few countries can match. But the real change wasn’t just in where the talent sat, it was in what that talent now represented: accumulated experience, institutional knowledge, and leadership depth.
Zinnov’s 5-Year GCC Landscape Report shows that global leadership roles from India have grown at a ~40% CAGR over the past five years, reaching 6,500+ roles in 2024, including 1,050+ women leaders. At this trajectory, that leadership pool is projected to surpass 30,000 by 2030, evidence of a flywheel that’s firmly in motion.
Talent isn’t India’s advantage anymore, it’s the engine of its global influence.
Between early 2024 and late 2025, ~110 new GCCs were established in India. The interesting part is not just the volume, it’s where they’re coming from. While US-headquartered firms still dominate the numbers, the last two years have seen a clear broadening of participation.
Companies from the UK, Germany, Japan, Denmark, and others have deepened their India presence, choosing the country not for cost, but for capability and speed.
The UK–India corridor stands out as a model of maturity. According to Zinnov UK GCC Impact Report 2025, over 130 UK firms now operate 250+ GCCs across India, employing more than 200,000 professionals across digital, design, and AI. German enterprises followed a similar trajectory, setting up engineering-led centers that reflect their precision and product ethos.
By 2025, India had moved from being the GCC capital to becoming the global meeting ground for enterprise innovation.
India’s GCC growth has been built on 6 cities that form its innovation grid, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, NCR, Pune, Mumbai, and Chennai. Together, they now host 92% of all GCCs operating in the country.
According to Zinnov Tier-I City Analysis Report 2025, Bengaluru, with 880+ centers, remains the nucleus, home to one in three new GCCs added in FY24 and the country’s deepest ER&D and AI talent base. Hyderabad, with 355+ centers, has built strong momentum through government-backed initiatives like T-AIM (Telangana AI Mission) and a vibrant startup network of 940+ firms.
Mumbai and Pune complement each other with sectoral depth in BFSI and Automotive, while NCR and Chennai continue to diversify the mix, adding strength in Engineering, Healthcare, and Renewable Energy.
By 2025, these cities weren’t just clusters, they had evolved into a connected network of specialized ecosystems that together anchor India’s global capability story.
If one segment truly captured the momentum of the last two years, it’s the Mid-market cohort.
The Zinnov–nasscom Mid-market Global Capability Centers (GCCs) Report 2025 highlights that 480+ centers, employing over 210,000 professionals, now make up 27% of India’s GCC landscape.
These centers are transformation hubs, often leaner and faster, and 1.3X more likely to drive enterprise-wide change. They’re also 1.5X more invested in DeepTech domains like AI, Cloud, and Cybersecurity.
And Karnataka sits at the heart of this wave. According to Zinnov-KDEM Karnataka Mid-market Report, nearly half of India’s Mid-market GCCs operate out of the state, supported by its forward-looking GCC policy and the Beyond Bengaluru initiative. The model, government as growth partner, is now being mirrored by Telangana, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu, all aligning their AI, Digital, and Semiconductor missions to similar intent.
By 2025, “mid-market” no longer meant mid-scale, it meant high-impact, powered by India’s most collaborative ecosystem yet.
At the other end of the spectrum are the Mega GCCs, centers with 5,000+ employees and parent companies earning over USD 1 billion annually. According to Zinnov Mega GCC Report 2025, they make up just 5% of India’s GCC count but employ nearly 50% of the total workforce.
Most of these centers have been in India for over two decades. They’ve matured from cost-driven operations into enterprise-critical transformation hubs. Nearly 9 in 10 now operate at the Portfolio or Transformation maturity stage, running global rollouts, compliance, and product mandates end-to-end.
Their workforce mix reflects that evolution, around 43% in ER&D, one-third in BPM, and leadership that’s increasingly global. Nearly two-thirds of Mega GCC heads today come from technical backgrounds, many managing dual mandates: running India operations while also leading global portfolios in Product, Engineering, or Cybersecurity.
With 88 Mega GCCs today and projections crossing 230 by 2030, this cohort represents scale meeting sophistication, the natural counterweight to the Mid-market wave that’s redefining speed.
By the end of 2025, India’s GCC network had crossed 1,760 centers. But the real story isn’t in the count, it’s in the confidence.
From Bengaluru’s dominance to Hyderabad’s surge, from the Mid-market’s speed to the Mega GCCs’ depth, the ecosystem has matured into something broader, bolder, and more catalytic than ever before.
If 2024 made India the GCC Capital of the World, 2025 made it the “Global Catalyst of the Future.”
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