India’s $100-billion GCC boom runs into an engineer talent puzzle

India is home to more than half of the world's Global Capability Centres (GCCs)—a sector generating $100 billion in annual revenue, with over 2,100 centres employing 23 lakh professionals directly. Speaking in July, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said India's ambition of building an ecosystem capable of supporting around 5,000 GCCs by 2030 was “realistic and achievable.”

But sustaining that expansion will depend on whether India can build an engineering talent pipeline with the specialised, industry-ready skills GCCs increasingly need.

On paper, the talent pool looks large. India produces 1.5 million engineering graduates every year, but only 25% to 30% are considered job-ready for GCCs and capable of contributing from day one, according to data shared with ET Online by TeamLease Digital.


As demand shifts towards specialised skills, companies are increasingly investing in training and upskilling to bridge the gap between classroom learning and workplace requirements.

Read more: The great $100-billion tech shift: GCCs tighten grip on India’s talent market

How big is the gap?

The majority of engineering graduates typically require three to six months of structured training before they are ready to take on a GCC job, according to TeamLease Digital.

“As GCCs evolve from delivery centres into innovation, engineering and business transformation hubs, demand for AI, data, cloud and cybersecurity skills is accelerating. Yet talent remains one of the biggest barriers to innovation. The shift underway is bigger than a skills transition—it's a reinvention of how organisations hire, develop and deploy talent,” Sundeep Gandhi, Chief Commercial Officer – GCC, Accenture, told ET Online.

The shortage of job-ready talent is also intensifying competition among GCCs for skilled professionals. As more global companies expand their operations in India, they are competing for the same limited talent pool, putting pressure on both employee retention and salaries.

“Rising attrition and compensation escalation are major pressures—overall GCC attrition sits at 16% in 2026, with average annual salary increases around 9.8%—alongside geographic concentration, since Bengaluru and Hyderabad continue to dominate new GCC setups, intensifying competition for the same talent pool across thousands of centres,” Dr Jyothi Menon, Global Head of People Operations and HR Advisory at BP told ET Online.

AI demand and supply

For fresh graduates, the challenge is not just having AI-related knowledge but being able to apply it to real-world business problems. Biju Davis, Senior Vice President and India Site Leader at InvoiceCloud GCC, said most fresh graduates have a strong academic foundation, but the transition from classroom learning to solving real business problems still requires significant development.

According to the Quess India AI Workforce Report 2026, India has an AI talent pool of nearly 920,000 professionals, yet the market faces a structural gap of around 900,000 between demand and available capability. AI, Data & Analytics continue to have the highest supply-demand gap at 36–40%, even as demand for these roles grew by 10% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ). Agentic AI is one of the fastest-growing talent segments, with demand increasing by 1,000–1,300% QoQ.

“The challenge is not hiring more engineers—it is finding engineers who can deploy AI systems at enterprise scale. Capability depth has become the biggest constraint on GCC expansion,” Kapil Joshi, CEO of IT Staffing at Quess Corp, said.

How GCCs are bridging the skills gap

To work with the talent available, GCCs are increasingly looking within rather than relying entirely on external hiring.

Ashish Saxena, HR Head at CDK India, explains that upskilling has become a core part of its talent strategy and that the organisation has been investing more in building capabilities within its existing workforce.

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The shift is also driving bigger investments in reskilling, workforce development and apprenticeship programmes, particularly for emerging technology roles.

“Upskilling isn't a fallback to hiring, but rather core to how we build durable teams,” said Himanshu Gandhi, Site General Manager at Cohere Health India. He added that external hiring alone cannot meet the sector's evolving talent needs.

That focus on building talent internally is also reflected in GCC spending. Quess Corp India shared with ET Online that GCCs now allocate 23% of their overall budgets to workforce development, almost at par with the 25% spent on technology.

To upskill their workers, organisations typically spend between Rs 50,000 and Rs 2 lakh per employee to build advanced AI, cloud and cybersecurity skills, depending on the role. “GCCs are increasingly turning to reskilling, with 71% making it a key part of their talent strategy as they struggle to find job-ready talent with the skills they need,” TeamLease Digital CEO Neeti Sharma said.

Apprenticeship-led programmes are another way companies are trying to build a more job-ready workforce. Combining on-the-job training with structured learning, these programmes have delivered transition rates of over 90% into formal employment. When apprenticeships are integrated with education, organisations also report up to a 50% reduction in hiring costs, a 10-25% improvement in retention, and a 20-25% increase in productivity.

“When learning is integrated into the workplace through apprenticeships and industry-led training, organisations are able to develop skills in line with business requirements while creating a more sustainable talent pipeline over the long term,” Dr Nipun Sharma, CEO, TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship, told ET Online.

GCCs are also looking beyond traditional hubs such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad to widen their talent pools.

NASSCOM data shows that office rentals in tier-2 cities are around 40–50% of tier-1 city rates, while experienced GCC professionals in these markets cost 20–30% less than their metro counterparts. For a mid-sized GCC with 500 employees, the difference can translate into significant annual savings.

The appeal of tier-2 and tier-3 cities, however, goes beyond lower operating costs. These locations are emerging as important talent markets, with more than 60% of India's engineering graduates now coming from smaller cities, according to NASSCOM. States such as Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Odisha produce large pools of technical talent, including software engineers, data scientists, business analysts and operations professionals, according to NASSCOM.

Building the talent pipeline

Beyond reskilling, industry stakeholders explain that closer collaboration between academia and industry will become increasingly important as companies seek professionals with specialised and emerging technology skills.

One way to strengthen this talent pipeline is to prepare students earlierfor the changing demands of the workplace.

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has introduced initiatives aimed at strengthening faculty expertise in emerging technologies. One such initiative is the AICTE Industry Fellowship Programme, which allows faculty members to work full-time in industry for a minimum of one year. The programme gives teachers practical industry exposure and helps them stay updated with evolving technologies, which they can then bring back into the classroom.

According to the AICTE website, the regulatory body has also launched the AICTE-QIP-PG Certificate Programme in Emerging Areas under its existing Quality Improvement Programme (QIP). Together, these initiatives are aimed at helping faculty members upgrade their skills and better prepare students for emerging technology roles.

For India’s GCC story to remain on track, the next phase may depend not just on how many centres the country can add, but on how effectively it can build, distribute and retain the talent needed to support them.