India Emerges as Hub for Mid-Market GCC Talent and Innovation
Mid-market GCCs in India now lead in product innovation, deep-tech roles, and enterprise agility, contributing 30% of new GCC units in two years.
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A report from Nasscom and Zinnov, titled India’s GCC Leap: Capturing Global Mid‑Market Momentum, examines the evolving role of mid‑market Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India’s technology services exports.
India hosts more than 480 mid‑market GCCs, employing over 210,000 staff across 680 units. These centres represent 27 percent of all GCCs in the country and 22 per cent of total GCC units. In the past two years, 45 mid‑market GCCs have established operations, accounting for 35 per cent of new centres and 30 per cent of new units.
Although these centres function at roughly 40 per cent of the scale of larger GCCs, they lead in transformation activity and maturity. Mid‑market hubs show a 1.3× greater presence in enterprise transformation and progress along the maturity curve at 1.2× the rate of their larger peers.
India now supplies 47 per cent of global product management roles in mid‑market GCCs and 25 per cent of deep‑tech roles. Nearly 60 per cent of end‑to‑end product and platform responsibilities in ER&D portfolios are managed from Indian centres. More than 80 per cent of these centres set hiring standards, performance metrics and culture frameworks for their parent organisations.
Bengaluru, Hyderabad, the National Capital Region and Chennai account for 74 per cent of all new mid‑market GCC units. Hyderabad has driven 25 per cent of mid‑market GCC talent growth over the past five years.
Rajesh Nambiar, President of Nasscom, said mid‑market centres will shape the next phase of enterprise digitisation through speed, specialisation and strategic influence. “With access to specialised skills in AI, cloud, cybersecurity and data science, these centres have moved from support roles to leading teams in research, development and digital rollout,” he said.
Pari Natarajan, CEO of Zinnov, noted the shift in operating models. “These centres are no longer scaled‑down versions of large organisations. They outpace larger peers in transformation and product ownership, and they drive hiring and culture from India,” she said.
The report identifies challenges in talent attraction, especially among early‑career professionals, and gaps in standardised processes that can hinder scale and cross‑functional collaboration. It also points to limited linkages with startups, academia and tech partners, as well as low local visibility that can restrict influence within India’s innovation ecosystem.
Globally, roughly 130,000 – 150,000 mid‑market firms could establish GCCs, and India aims to capture an estimated 30,000 – 40,000 of these investments from markets such as the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan, across verticals including software, internet services, BFSI and healthcare.
To sustain growth, the report calls for streamlined regulatory pathways, cost‑effective GCC‑as‑a‑service offerings, development of innovation clusters and proactive policy support. It concludes that mid‑market GCCs have the potential to become AI‑native innovation centres that generate intellectual property and drive organisational change at scale.
