India is at the heart of a global change in how companies build, grow, and run global capability centers (GCCs). What started as a way to cut costs with offshore delivery has evolved into a strategy that drives innovation, engineering, analytics, and digital transformation for the world's biggest organizations.
Today, India has the largest number of GCCs in the world and shows no sign of slowing down. However, as this growth picks up speed, one truth is becoming clear: success in the next stage of GCC growth will rely less on location and more on talent infrastructure.
India’s GCC Boom: A Shift From Scale to Strategy
India’s GCC ecosystem has grown quickly over the last decade. In 2024, India hosted over 1700 GCCs and employed more than 1.9 million professionals. Companies in various industries, including technology, BFSI, manufacturing, healthcare, and retail, now depend on their India-based GCCs for both execution and strategic results.
Important changes that define this boom include:
Expansion into Tier-2 cities beyond Tier-1 metros
Delivery models that are dispersed among several places
Higher hiring volumes and quicker ramp-ups
Increased expectations from global headquarters on governance, productivity, and quality
As GCCs grow larger and more complex, organizations are realizing that simply increasing headcount is not enough. The real challenge lies in sourcing, managing, governing, and optimizing at scale.
The New Reality: GCC Growth Brings Talent Complexity
The environment in which modern GCCs are operating is far more challenging than it was in the past. Hiring is no longer simple or centralized; rather, organizations deal with:
Multiple hiring locations working at the same time
Diverse talent requirements across engineering, analytics, AI, cybersecurity, and operations
An excessive dependence on vendors, partners, and contract workers
Increasing demands for data visibility, transparency, and compliance.
Pressure to shorten time-to-hire and reduce costs without sacrificing quality
In this setting, fragmented systems and disconnected tools can quickly create bottlenecks. Recruiters lose productivity, leaders miss insight, and scaling becomes reactive rather than strategic.
This is where the focus shifts from talent tools to the talent infrastructure. To manage this complexity effectively, GCCs need more than hiring tools; they need a strong, scalable talent infrastructure.
Why Talent Infrastructure Matters More Than Ever for GCCs
Talent infrastructure is more than just hiring software. It connects people, processes, data, and decisions throughout the entire talent lifecycle.
For GCCs operating at scale, infrastructure affects:
How quickly teams can be built
How consistently processes are followed across cities
How effectively vendors and partners are managed
How confidently can you make workforce decisions
Without solid infrastructure, sustaining GCC growth becomes tough, especially as operations expand across various cities and talent markets. In many ways, talent infrastructure for GCCs is as important as physical infrastructure. Just like office space, connectivity, and security support operations, talent systems support scale, speed, and stability.
What Modern GCC Talent Infrastructure Must Enable
To meet today’s GCC demands, the talent infrastructure must go beyond just basic applicant tracking.
Coming from the GCC perspective, whether you're hiring in Bengaluru, Pune, Ahmedabad, or any new Tier-2 locations, your systems need to be able to grow with you, and should not falter in their processes.
AI-driven talent sourcing and screening is the name of the game in the GCC. It is virtually impossible to match the scale of the demands in this market. Using artificial intelligence will let you reach a much larger talent pool and eliminate the guesswork from the hiring process.
Leaders in the GCC need real-time information on how their hiring is progressing, the mix of people they have, the performance of their external suppliers, and whether they are complying with all the regulations. Consistency is what makes things tick at a larger scale. So, hiring, onboarding, and workforce workflows must all run according to the same rules in every GCC unit.
As GCCs start to use a blended workforce of regular employees, freelancers, and outsourced workers, effectively managing these groups and the laws that apply to them, has become more and more important, and infrastructure should be able to handle the fast hiring that the GCC is known for, without sacrificing quality, governance, or the happiness of the people you are hiring.
Ceipal’s Role in Powering GCC Talent Infrastructure
At Ceipal, we see firsthand how GCCs struggle when talent systems fail to keep pace with growth. That’s why our platform is designed not as a point solution, but as an AI-powered talent infrastructure automation platform built for scale.
Ceipal helps GCCs:
Access larger and more diverse talent pools through AI-powered sourcing and screening
Maintain centralized visibility across hiring, onboarding, and workforce operations
Standardize processes across Tier-1 and Tier-2 locations
Automate vendor, compliance, and workforce workflows
Improve recruiter productivity while reducing cost per hire
Whether organizations are launching a new GCC or scaling existing operations across cities, Ceipal provides the systems layer that enables consistency, speed, and control without adding operational overhead.
Infrastructure Will Define the Next Phase of GCC Growth
India’s GCC boom is far from over. The next wave of growth will likely be more spread out, more specialized, and more focused on talent.
Looking at the Global Capability Centers boom in India, it's clear that the next phase will be a more gradual, more specialized, and more talent-driven affair. Coming from that understanding, we can expect the following developments:
The GCCs will continue to spread to larger Tier-1 cities and Tier-2 cities
GCCs will be characterized by more sophisticated AI, analytics, and digital engineering services.
People will be the key to the growth of these GCCs, and so companies will be under pressure to hang on to them and improve their work experience.
Lastly, have higher standards for governance, leadership, financial transparency, and efficiency.
In this future, organizations that invest early in flexible talent infrastructure will be best positioned to grow confidently and sustainably.
Ceipal: The Talent Infrastructure Behind India’s GCC Growth
India’s GCC success story is unfolding right now. As organizations grow faster and expand further, talent infrastructure will decide who leads and who falls behind.
Ceipal is proud to support this change, helping global capability centers hire smarter, operate smoothly, and scale confidently, no matter where they build.
Curious to learn more about how Ceipal can help? Contact us, and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
.png)
