Manufacturing, transport firms overtake banks to lead India’s GCC boom

Manufacturing and transport companies have overtaken banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) firms to become the primary engine of India’s global capability centre (GCC) expansion.

Manufacturing and transport firms accounted for one in every three tech centres announced so far this year (23 of 74), up from about one in five across 2025, according to Massachusetts-based HFS Research. These industrial players are scrambling for greater tech ownership in the AI era and the large-scale engineering talent India offers.

At least 74 new GCCs were announced in the first nine months of the year, of which 23, or about 30%, were set up by manufacturers across capital goods, chemicals, consumer durables, materials, tech hardware, and transport firms, HFS Research found. This is roughly the same amount as the whole of last year, in which 26 of the 132 new GCCs, or about 20%, were set up by manufacturing firms.

Meanwhile, BFSI’s share of new tech hubs collapsed to just 5.4% (four centres) in the first nine months of 2026, from 16% (21 centres) in 2025. Healthcare and life sciences GCCs, on the other hand, saw an uptick, rising from roughly 11% in FY25 to 16% in the first nine months of 2026.

Global capability centres (GCCs) are back-end technology hubs of large companies. They manage the parent firm’s IT operations, ensuring that tools, mechanisms, and proprietary processes are kept in-house rather than outsourced to third-party vendors.

India’s pull stems from its abundant pool of skilled talent and relatively low cost of setting up offices. Global players such as JPMorgan, Bank of America, Walmart, and Airbus have already built major hubs here, together employing over 100,000 workers.

The country currently has about 2,000 GCCs, according to IT industry body Nasscom, which expects that number to reach 2,200 by March 2030, propelling the size of the market to $105 billion.

Hyderabad leads

So far in 2026, Hyderabad has outpaced Bengaluru in new GCC additions, though Bengaluru still holds the largest share of centers nationwide. “In this year’s cohort to date, Bengaluru accounts for 18% of new centers, down from 30% in the comparable 2025 set, while Hyderabad continues to lead with a little over 33%,” said Achyuta Ghosh, head of the global GCC practice at HFS Research.

In February, ArcelorMittal said it was hiring around 2,000 people at its Pune and Hyderabad offices to manage the IT modernization, data analytics, cybersecurity, finance, human resources and project management of its Europe operations.

Hyderabad saw another GCC opening three months later, when Southwest Airlines inaugurated its first tech centre in May. The company plans to hire about 1,000 people to handle AI, data science and analytics, digital modernisation, cybersecurity, and software product development from its tech centre.

Smaller cities are also riding this wave. In July, Bain Capital-backed Milacron, one of the world’s largest plastics manufacturers, established its first GCC in Coimbatore, where it has already hired 60 professionals to handle its IT operations.

Growth drivers

Manufacturing has emerged as the fastest-growing sector among new entrants, with more companies expected to announce India tech centers over the final months of the year. The primary driver of this wave is a push to digitize operations through AI.

“While the big companies have set up shop, a lot of these companies are mid-market firms with annual revenue of less than $5 billion. The need for skilled AI talent to digitize operations has driven the shift despite supply chain uncertainties caused by the Middle East conflict,” said Ghosh.

Two other GCC enablers said cost reduction is another primary factor driving their India expansion. “The Middle East conflicts would have affected their supply chains and they may be looking at India as a cost-saving location rather than an innovation hotbed right from the start,” said Ramaswamy Narayanan, CEO of Bridgepath Innovations, a boutique GCC consulting firm based in Bengaluru.

A third executive said he expects the GCC momentum among manufacturing firms to pick up in the coming months. “Manufacturing and transportation are probably the next natural wave of GCC growth because these businesses are becoming technology businesses much faster than we realise,” said Kaushik Srinivasan, managing partner of KAN, a strategy consulting firm in New York.

He added that in-house centres also give firms greater control over critical tech processes in the face of mounting geopolitical risks. “After years of supply-chain disruption and geopolitical uncertainty, companies have realised that critical knowledge cannot sit entirely with vendors or be fragmented across multiple locations. A GCC gives them greater ownership of technology, engineering capability, data and institutional knowledge,” Srinivasan said.