The latest report by NASSCOM, the trade body representing India’s IT industry, shows that global capability centres (GCCs) are growing far faster than expected. In FY26, GCCs generated $98.4 billion in revenue, already nearing the $105 billion mark that NASSCOM had earlier projected for FY30.

India now hosts 2,117 GCCs operating across 3,728 units and employing around 23.6 lakh people. Bengaluru remains the country’s largest GCC hub, accounting for more than 29% of all GCC units and over one-third of installed talent. Meanwhile, Hyderabad has emerged as the preferred destination for new banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) GCCs, attracting nearly half of all new entrants over the past year. The report also points to a gradual shift beyond traditional tech hubs, with around 5% of new GCC units coming up in emerging cities.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly at the centre of this growth story. More than 250 GCCs in India are now AI-focused, according to NASSCOM. Rajesh Nambiar, President of NASSCOM, told The Core that India’s biggest advantage lies in its talent base. “We have the largest pool of AI-ready talent in the world,” he said, adding that newer GCCs are increasingly being set up as “AI-first” centres handling more strategic and innovation-led work.

In an interview with The Core’s Govindraj Ethiraj, Nambiar spoke about the rapid rise of GCCs, how AI is reshaping India’s technology sector, the shift in talent from IT services firms to GCCs, and why global companies continue to expand their India operations despite geopolitical uncertainty.

Here are edited excerpts from the interview:

So, I’ll ask you a broad-based question. I mean, what’s the most significant development you’ve seen in the GCC space this year? Sorry, not last year, but this year. So, I’ll keep it broad-based and I’ll follow from there. And then you can pick up on some of the data points and so on.

So, it’s been an interesting time, particularly in the last two months, but let me go back a few more months. How has the year 2026 been in the broad sense, both in terms of how things were and the transitions that we’re seeing in the global capability centre space?

See, if you look at the overall industry, I think it’s not been a great year. And given that, we still had growth, which is good. The whole industry still grew by about 6.2% or so over the last one year. And we also had employment growth, even though it was not at the same clip as the revenue growth. Employee numbers still grew by 2.3% or so.

But then the silver lining, or like a green shoot, if you may, within the story, was that there are some really bright spots, like GCCs that you mentioned, global capability centres. They grew a lot faster. They had a clearly higher number of employees joining them compared to even the service providers, in some sense. So, that was a big aha for all of us.

So, if you look at the last five years or so, I think we have grown at a very steady clip of about 7% to 8% on the GCC front, sometimes even 10%. And I think that has given us a lot of momentum in that space.

Today, we have 2,117 GCCs as of the last count that we had, which is March 31, 2026. That’s a big number compared to what we thought we would end up with.

Every year, almost more than two new GCCs a week are actually coming into the country. There’s a lot of brownfield expansion, which means existing GCCs are also expanding. So, our number of units is expanding quite well.

In my mind, we thought some of the global geopolitical situation, or what is going on with technology and artificial intelligence, may create a little bit of a lull. But we were proven otherwise. I think there is still enough momentum in the mix. So, it’s given us growth in that sense.

Right. So, in the interplay between IT services and GCCs, when I say interplay, I mean people who are moving from IT services to GCCs, and maybe some back as well. How are you seeing the composite picture today?

So, there are two types of movement, I think. One is a leadership movement, which we believe there’s probably more of, which is going from IT services into GCC leadership. I think that’s very natural.

The type of leadership that you need around GCCs is slightly different from what you traditionally need in an IT services firm, because you’re dealing with external customers and then you have sales to run and so on. So, I think there’s a little bit of a pivot people have to make.

Then you’re talking about the larger group, which is the majority of the population. I think they’ve kind of learned to coexist in some sense.

Obviously, GCCs end up paying a little bit more than what service providers pay, but then you have better growth opportunities in the services space because you can do multiple things. So, it’s always been apples and oranges in some sense, and you can’t really compare them.

But there is some movement back and forth. Very little from GCCs to service providers, but mostly the other way around. Also, the fact that they’re hiring more than the service providers, at least if you take the last couple of years, that’s been the case.

So, par for the course, I don’t think there’s anything unusual.

Right. And GCCs are now almost a $100 billion revenue business. That’s correct, 98.4 billion.

98.5. It is touching $100 billion, yes.

And how does this now contrast when you look at the entire IT services pie? And are you calculating together, or are you beginning to separate?

No, we are separating it out in some sense, and we do have segmentation.

The broader industry is roughly at $315 billion for the same time period. So, it is almost 100 out of 315, which is a pretty big portion of it.

If you consider the fact that 20 years ago this was probably a very, very small number, today it’s a very large part of what the industry’s growth has been.

And the interesting part, Govind, is not just the revenue numbers and employee count, but also the type of work they’re doing.

There was a time when people thought GCCs don’t really do good work, whereas service providers are doing better work because they’ve been serving global clients and so on. But that has also changed a bit.

Today, especially the new GCCs have been positioned as AI-first GCCs, which means they’ve been able to do a lot more interesting work and own broader problems for their enterprise. They represent much more than probably some of the service providers.

So, in that sense, I think they’ve truly been moving up the innovation curve.

I mean, we all talk about innovation, etc. And as you know, not everything is innovation. So, I also want to make sure we’re not overblowing this whole innovation thing by saying every GCC today is innovation.

But there is a significant portion of GCCs that are doing much more meaningful work than they probably did 20 years ago.

The movement is clearly driven by the faith that the broader global enterprise actually has in them, the capability they’ve shown over a period of time, and the resilience they’ve shown against many of the problems GCCs have faced.

So, that’s actually giving them the runway.

And the stat that you shared was that 250-plus GCCs are AI/ML exclusive. Correct?

Correct.

So, in contrast to 2,117, it’s obviously a good number, but can you throw some more light on that?

It’s basically because most of them have started in the last one or two years. So, that is number one. And they started as AI-first.

They didn’t start by saying, “Oh, we need to save a lot of cost,” or by saying, “Maintain the legacy of the enterprise in India,” and so on.

They started with the idea that they need to create the right set of capabilities around artificial intelligence, which means they need to take broader problems and try to solve them in India.

So, if that is the mindset, they’ve been able to expand quite a bit on being AI-first.

But that doesn’t mean only 250 are doing AI. I would say more than half of them are doing some kind of AI, whether it’s AI implementation in some pockets, or developing tool sets and incorporating models.

So, all of that work is happening in other GCCs as well.

Okay, I’m going to come to a broader IT question in a moment. But when people come to you and ask you about setting up in India at this point in time, what are the kinds of questions they’re asking? And I mean this as a 2026 question.

Some of the questions they asked us maybe 10 years ago are still relevant, meaning which is the right city to go to, how do we really set up shop, and what are the broader challenges with incorporation and so on.

So, those are obviously still there.

But the bigger question they’re asking us is about the kind of talent required in today’s world.

They know for sure that volume is never a problem. There are going to be a lot of people. So, hiring itself is not an issue, especially given current market conditions.

But do they have the right leadership to lead the centre into the future and the new-age growth they’re looking for? That’s number one.

Number two is whether they will get the right kind of talent where they no longer have to hire people and train them for a long period before deploying them.

That’s another thing they are worried about. Now that there’s so much happening around AI, they want to know if this is the right time for them to make the investment. Will they be able to get the right set of people?

So, it’s no longer a volume game. It’s more about capability.

The challenge for them is identifying the right place to invest and whether they’ll get the right set of talent.

These are some of the newer questions they’re asking us.

Right. And the answers to that would be?

Well, we know for sure that if you don’t get it here, you’re not going to get it anywhere else. That’s number one.

But that alone doesn’t solve the problem.

We believe the biggest advantage GCCs are getting today is not just hiring from each other, but leveraging the broader ecosystem.

That also means we have the largest pool of AI-ready talent in the world. That comes from the fact that there are so many service providers who have also been dealing with this issue.

So, this is not happening in isolation only for GCCs. Enough capacity has already been created.

So, the chances are that if you’re setting up now and you need 300 to 400 people to bootstrap what you’re trying to do, even in artificial intelligence or cutting-edge technology, it’s not going to be that hard.

You can definitely find that number of people from across the board.

So, I think they are convinced that there is enough of a talent pool and enough sources that exist, especially if you choose a larger city.

Now, it’s a different story if you flip the question and ask whether you want to go to a tier-two city and so on.

That’s why I wouldn’t say it’s a great idea at this point for new operations to go directly into a tier-two city.

Okay. And last question.

We’ve had a war raging in West Asia for some time. It has created uncertainty around the world.

What’s the sense or impact of all of that on IT as a whole, and IT services specifically? And how are you seeing the next few months?

The good thing for us, and I would say “good thing” only because it hasn’t had a big impact yet, is that there is always an indirect impact if our customers are hurting.

If our customers are hurting, that means they will reduce discretionary spending, which eventually comes back to affect the industry.

So, number one, the Indian technology industry’s exposure to the Middle East was very minimal. From a percentage point of view, it was negligible.

So, that way we didn’t have any issue with people moving back and forth to the Middle East.

I was told we’ve benefited because there were people who wanted to set up GCCs in the Emirates, but are now thinking of moving to India.

To some extent. But GCCs were never really a major thing in Gulf countries. And GCC is also a confusing term there because we’re talking about Gulf Cooperation Council countries. So, we are talking about the other GCCs.

Setting up centres in the Middle East was being done for completely different reasons. So, we’ve not really competed with them in that sense.

But there are companies that were looking at doing a lot of things in the Middle East and are now considering other locations. I’m not suggesting it’s only India. Because that type of capability, especially around some of the new-age technology, can be built in India, but they could also pick another centre.

But for pure GCCs, obviously India gets a bit of a benefit. But I thought the question was broader in terms of the IT industry and the overall industry.

For us, I think the exposure is… and all the uncertainty that we’ve been seeing.

Yeah, yeah. So, if you go back and look at the results announced by all the companies, almost without exception, every one of them had increased levels of order books.

So, the book of business, or the signings as we call them in the industry, which are indicators of future revenue, has actually been going up, which is good news.

Revenues have also been going up, though not by a very large amount. Depending on where you are, the percentage growth was pretty decent, given everything else. Certainly, there was no negative growth and so on. That’s number one.

Employee growth has been a bit of a concern. Some companies had flat growth or no growth at all. Some had very little growth.

So, that is the concerning point because you’re now finding the gap between revenue growth and employee growth widening a little bit. That’s something we need to keep in mind.

But otherwise, as of today, if the war ends tomorrow, I think this will be a blip on the radar. But if the war lasts for the next six months, certainly there’s going to be an impact on every industry, including ours.

Rajesh, thank you so much for joining me. It’s always a pleasure, Govind. Always nice talking to you. Thank you very much.