More Mid-Sized GCCs Will Enter India in the Post Trump Era The number of GCCs in India could swell up to 3,500 by 2030 and the size of the market will grow from USD 60 billion to beyond USD 110 billion in the next 5 years.

More number of mid-sized GCCs are expected to enter India in the post Donald Trump era due to factors like price rise and talent shortage that are plaguing the US economy.

"When GCC came to India in early 90s, they came in quest for backend operations but soon they realised that India also has the talent to support their innovation-led R&D endeavours. So, over a period of time, they emerged and evolved as R&D units…In phase 2, they started focussing on India markets and most of them were set up keeping in mind India's talent pool and economics of operations," said Alouk Kumar, CEO, Inductus GCC, a consulting firm.

"GCC 3.0 is about the post Trump era and more mid-sized GCCs will be entering India, the number swelling up to 3,500 by 2030. The size of the market will grow from USD 60 billion to beyond USD 110 billion in the next 5 years. Last year, on an average, one GCC was set up in India every week. This year, this is expected to increase to two GCCs a week which is a 100 per cent growth," Kumar told Entrepreneur India.

(Alouk Kumar, CEO, Inductus GCC)

Many IT service companies in India are actively establishing their own GCC units to compete on the growing trend of multinational corporations setting up their own in-house technology centers in India. For example, Infosys is said to be actively pursuing GCC-related initiatives under its Project Altius, including BOT (Build, Operate, Transfer) models and scaling support services. Similarly, Cognizant has appointed a global head of GCC services and reportedly has 10 active GCC projects. Wipro too is reportedly building a dedicated GCC service line. This is also an indication of the pressure felt by the traditional IT services companies from the GCC sector.

Kumar said that a major chunk of the GCC talent comes from the IT services industry which is already a mature sector in the country. "There has been a de-growth of IT services industry. The loss of IT services industry has been a gain for GCCs," he said.

Currently, GCCs contribute 1.5–2 per cent to India's GDP and it is likely to touch 3.5 per cent in 2024 according to the Economic Survey. However, Inductus believes this could touch 5 per cent after taking into account the Trump's era.

Apart from the US, other major economies like Germany and Japan are also eying India to set up R&D centers. "Slow economic growth, an ageing population, and high wage structures are putting tremendous pressure on their economies and that is in turn driving the India advantage. Sector wise, IT, BFSI, healthcare, aviation, and automobile are leading the setting up of the GCCs," Kumar said.

India is renowned for its deep expertise in emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and cloud computing. With a score of 2.8, India leads the world in AI skill penetration, ahead of the US (2.2) and Germany (1.9), according to the Stanford AI Index 2024. Since 2016, India's concentration of AI talent has increased 263 per cent, making it a significant hub for AI.