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Over the last few years, the UK and India have deepened their ties across trade, technology, education, and innovation. But in 2025, this partnership has crossed a new milestone. India has become a strategic node for UK-headquartered organizations looking to drive scale, innovation, and resilience.
It’s not just the world’s fifth-largest economy, it’s where the future of work, tech, and talent is converging. With a forecast to become the third-largest economy by 2030, India is no longer just a market companies want to serve – it’s the engine they want to build from.
Over 130 UK Global Capability Centers (GCCs) have been set up in India as of FY2024, employing more than 200,000 professionals. That makes them the second-largest GCC cohort in India, after the US.
What are these centers doing? Not just support work. 95% of UK Global Capability Centers talent in India today is focused on IT, Engineering, and R&D. These aren’t cost centers – they’re product, tech, and innovation hubs.
The UK is the sixth-largest investor in India, having brought in USD 35 Bn since 2000. That capital hasn’t just created jobs – it has laid the foundation for long-term Digital and Engineering capability.
The “so what” is this: UK firms are not using India as a low-cost destination. They’re using it to solve for capability gaps at home, especially in areas like Engineering, AI, and Product Development – all while achieving speed, scale, and cost advantages.
India Offers More Than Talent – It Offers Strategic Leverage
India produces the highest number of STEM graduates globally and is home to 3.3 Mn Software Engineers - but scale is only part of the story.
While the global cost of setting up 100-member teams has increased by ~8%, India continues to offer up to 50% lower costs than the UK.
India also has the largest AI-ready workforce in the world, and UK Global Capability Centers are tapping into this with increasing urgency. Many have moved from pilot projects to production-scale AI programs, using Indian talent and tech ecosystems to drive the shift.
The real edge isn’t just affordability. It’s about being able to build high-performance teams fast, with access to adjacent capabilities in start-ups, academia, and R&D communities.
UK Global Capability Centers are no longer built just for efficiency. They are now being designed for growth, innovation, and value creation.
Many UK firms are leveraging India’s start-up ecosystem and co-innovation programs with universities to test, build, and scale ideas that would take significantly longer and cost far more elsewhere.
With a growing shortage of Engineering talent in the UK, GCCs in India are stepping in to build entire Product Development cycles – from design to deployment – accelerating speed-to-market.
Several UK Global Capability Centers have become global AI Centers of Excellence, driving enterprise-wide GenAI and Intelligent Automation initiatives, powered by India’s AI workforce and start-up ecosystem.
These centers are also consolidating shared services (HR, Finance, Legal, Procurement) into unified, tech-enabled hubs – creating leaner, faster, more intelligent business backbones.
Why This Report, and Why Now?
We’re at a moment of inflection. UK companies are transforming how they operate – not just within the UK, but globally. And India is playing a central role in that transformation.
That’s why we’ve created the “UK Impact Report” - to bring clarity, data, and insight into how UK Global Capability Centers are evolving in India, what strategic levers they’re pulling, and what other firms can learn from their success.
This report goes beyond headline numbers to uncover the real shifts in capability, talent strategy, and innovation delivery. It is a blueprint for how UK businesses can harness India’s unique strengths to build a future-ready Global Enterprise.
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