For the first time since 2008, global in-house center (GIC) hires by foreign companies overtook the number of people hired by India’s IT services and back-office companies. About 1,100 GICs now employ 900,000 people in India.
“While hiring by pure-play India-based technology services players was muted, Indian GICs have hired nearly 130,000 people [in 2017] to strengthen operations, drive economies of scale and to some extent, drive innovation,” said Santosh Thangavelu, senior vice president of starring agency, Teamlease.
Companies in financial services such BNP Paribas, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, and those in other sectors such as Shell, JCPenney, and AstraZeneca have added thousands of people over the past year. Shell, which employs 9,000 people in India including contractual staff, said its information technology hub in Bangalore is key to realizing the opportunity of digitization which is transforming conventional business models.
“Global enterprises are looking at their India centers as harbingers of digital technology transformation,” said K.S. Viswanathan, vice-president, Industry Initiatives, Nasscom. He strongly believes that GICs have started hiring for product engineering, and for research and development talent.
Last updated: December 26th, 2025
