A company has a GCC in India if –
1. HQ country is outside India
2. There are non-GTM (non sales) people in India. Their first/primary focus on India is to build a capability center.
There are 2052 GCCs in India as of April 21, 2025.
The term is coined for the GCCs in India. This term is also used (only) in India. Do other countries have GCCs ? yes. they do. Other countries have been inspired from India. There are some companies such as E & Y who have worked on building talent pool in Turkey.
Countries such as Turkey, Romania, and Philippines are known for their GCCs as well.
The headquarter of the company does not have a goal of earning revenue from the captive (GCC). The goal is to twofold –
Short Term – To check the potential of cost cutting by outsourcing.
Long Term – To build capability, push for innovation.
The term is coined for the GCCs in India. Do other countries have GCCs ? yes. they do. Other countries have been inspired from India. There are some companies such as E & Y who have worked on building talent pool in Turkey.
I asked leaders at Cap gemini, TCS, and Infosys. They recognized that outsourcing models are changing. AI has made it clear.
On one hand, no-code, vibe coding, and platforms such as cursor.ai are changing the ecosystem, reducing the dependency on junior software developer. On the other hand, everyone is jumping to help enterprises adapt AI.
Hence, IT outsourcing is going through a discovery phase. At the same time, it is important to remember that IT outsourcing industry had learned (from the past) to take advantage of RPA, BPM. It can do the same in AI era.
Remember, if you follow Linkedin these days, everyone is going ga-ga about “Outcome as a service”.
It is similar to the way you think about hiring an employee vs freelancer/contractor. Enterprises will like to keep a balance between outsourcing to other vendors vs one’s captive.
It is true that outsourcing vendors just cannot accept the same as before. They have evolved to sell from thought leadership perspective. Relationships are still crucial.
Think of GCCs in 2 ways.
a. Young Vs old GCCs: Needs of old GCCs and young GCCs are different. Old ones have established relationships with vendors. New ones are still building relationships.
Old ones are focused on innovation and new ones are focused on proving India model using cost cutting as the main goal.
Mature Sales teams understand the GCC maturity by their age in India, by their employee count in India.
Young ones will have short sales cycles.
Young ones will need help in manpower planning, real estate, services (IT services, Account Payable, AR, and Banking). There might be more fields.
Old ones will need help in employee retention, people and culture, workplace, L & D, employee engagement, and building a culture of innovation.
b. Enterprise, Mid-market, and Small GCCs:
Enterprise GCCs in Oil and Gas, BFSI, Retail, Auto, and SaaS have established GCCs successfully, are growing, moving more money to India. These GCCs have longer sales cycle, decision making is slow. Indian decision makers are focused on shortlisting vendors. Hence, approach them with long sales cycle in mindset.
Are you able to decide based on this information ? if not, please ask me.
Not every GCC succeeds in India. We found that more than 50+ GCCs have closed or got acquired or merged in last 3 years. First few years are tough for the GCCs. As per reports, GCC model is proven, and # of GCCs will increase from 2K to 5K+ by 2030.
1. What sales intelligence is available about GCCs?
2. What opportunities are available in these GCCs?
About OceanFrogs:
Well, I am building GCC Intel for last 7 years. Automation Anywhere (AA) had asked us to identify their technology usage for their Competitive Intelligence (CI) studies. Salesforce challenged us further by asking us to increase their coverage, get contacts in shared services, Center of Excellences (COEs). Infosys asked us to know their footprint (locations) in India. CSS asked us to provide their technology investment, hiring trends.
There are many marquee clients along the way (large and small). SaaS companies such as New Relic, LambdaTest, BrowserStack, Jombay. US Based Strategy departments of companies such as Deloitte, Accenture have also planned their strategies using OceanFrogs’ GCC Intelligence.
Still learning daily.
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