GCCs to employ over 3 million professionals in India by 2025

Global Capability Centres (GCCs) run by large companies in India are set to hire over three million employees in the country by 2025, according to data from hiring firm Xpheno, shared exclusively with Mint. GCCs are captive centres operations including back office, tech support functions etc. run by large multinationals to enhance productivity. Today, they use GCCs as a centre of excellence (COE) as well.

In terms of hiring of experience professionals, Xpheno’s data says that at the current growth rate, a net headcount addition in GCCs of 180,000 to 200,000 is expected by FY23. The total workforce in these captive units, on the other hand, is expected to double by 2025 and reach the 3-4 million mark.

“A majority of this net addition will come from talent absorbed from the IT Services sector,” said Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Xpheno. “The desirability quotient of GCCs has grown over the years as they created a recall with their brand value and purchase power in the talent market,”

For instance, a full-stack engineer with 4-7 years' experience is expected to get ₹18 lakh to ₹26 lakh per annum in a GCC, as opposed to ₹15-24 lakh in an IT services firm. Similarly, data engineers and analysts get ₹12-22 lakh at GCCs, against ₹11 lakh-20 lakh in the IT services sector.

The competition created by GCCs is visible from a sharp drop in offer acceptance rates that IT services employers dealt with last year. IT Services players were for the first time seen making counter offers and retention offers to talent that was being wooed away by GCCs. The data shows that 23% of the IT Services sector talent has had one or more career movements over the last 12 month period, till July 2022.

The increased hiring in GCCs is a result of MNCs looking to convert these units into innovation centers, conducting advanced research and development for them. “Prior to 2014, AstraZeneca was dependent on external partners to deliver its IT commitments, but there was an evolving need to uplift the quality of service to the business. This was when the importance of insourcing our IT capability became clear," Siva Padmanabhan, Managing Director of bio-pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca India Private Ltd. (AZIPL), told Mint earlier this month.
 
India had over 1500 GCCs by the end of July 2022, according to a report published earlier this month by industry body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom). This includes GCCs from global brands like Adidas, AirBus Commercial, AT&T, American Express, Apple, Autodesk, BofA, Barclays, BBC, Bloomberg, BMW, Boeing, and more.