The market size for global capability centers (GCC), also known as multinational tech centers, amounted to $28.3 billion in 2018, compared to $19.5 billion in 2014 according to a study by industry body Nasscom.
With over 1,250 and counting, India has the biggest presence of GCCs in the world, (the segment’s size has been estimated by multiplying the number of employees with the average cost of the employee), which employ more than one million people — a quarter of the total workforce in the country’s tech sector.
In the early 1990s, GCCs in India were set up merely as back-offices focusing on operational efficiency, driven by cost arbitrage and abundant talent availability. “Over the last two decades, GCCs have transitioned … to value creators. GCCs have gained maturity, evolving from being single-function to multi-function centers, local to global governance, delivery focused to business focused,” says the study.
Engineering, research and development are the leading areas of GCC function and the technologies being developed in India are used for creating generic malware signatures, machine learning-based security solutions, customer analytics, disease detection and connectivity platforms. In finance, they are leveraged for fraud detection, data analytics in cash management, chatbots, loan processing automation, insurance claims processing automation, payment analytics, and treasury management.
Bangalore continues to be the hub for this sector, followed by Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai. Pune and Chennai have a strong presence of GCCs in the automotive domain expertise.
Last updated: December 26th, 2025
