India’s IT Talent War Heats Up as Global Capability Centres Look Towards Tech Firms
15 Mar 2025 / 04 min read
Global Capability Centres are aggressively poaching top IT talent, disrupting India's outsourcing giants and reshaping the country's technology job market and innovation landscape.
For decades, India’s IT services giants have built billion-dollar businesses by providing outsourced talent to multinational corporations. Now, those same corporations are cutting out the middleman. Global Capability Centres (GCCs)—in-house technology hubs set up by multinational firms—are aggressively poaching talent from India’s largest IT services companies, reshaping the industry’s talent dynamics and threatening the dominance of outsourcing giants like Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys.
The numbers illustrate this shift. Nearly half of all employees in Indian GCCs today have been recruited directly from IT services firms, up from just 35% a year ago. With higher salaries, better career trajectories, and greater exposure to advanced technologies, GCCs are emerging as the new employers of choice for India’s best tech minds.
Originally established as cost-saving offshore centres for business processes, GCCs have evolved into mission-critical hubs for AI research, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and product development. Companies that once relied on external IT vendors now prefer to develop proprietary software and analytics in-house, reducing dependency on third-party firms.
This transformation is making GCCs an attractive destination for skilled professionals. Employees working in AI, data science, and cybersecurity roles at GCCs command salaries 20-30% higher than their counterparts in IT services firms. The shift is not limited to engineers—senior executives are also making the move. Over 100 vice presidents and senior leaders from top IT firms have transitioned to GCCs in the past year alone, lured by the prospect of driving global technology strategies rather than simply executing outsourced projects.
The GCC boom is also reshaping India’s IT geography. While Bengaluru and Hyderabad remain dominant, multinational firms are now expanding their capability centres to second-tier cities such as Coimbatore, Jaipur, and Indore. These cities offer a lower cost of living, reduced attrition rates, and access to an emerging talent pool trained in India’s engineering colleges.
Companies are also rethinking their recruitment pipelines. GCCs are increasingly hiring from specialized training academies and finishing schools, a strategy that has doubled in adoption over the past two years. Until recently, such hires accounted for just 5% of the workforce at GCCs—today, that figure is nearing 10%, with some experts predicting it could rise to 20% in the coming years.
For India’s IT outsourcing industry, the rise of GCCs presents an existential challenge. While IT firms still dominate large-scale technology implementation projects, their high-end engineering and consulting talent is increasingly being absorbed into in-house teams at multinational corporations.
To stay relevant, IT service providers are repositioning themselves. Some are offering co-development partnerships, where GCCs retain ownership of critical projects while outsourcing select functions to Indian IT firms. Others are investing in AI and automation to reduce reliance on human capital. The long-term question is whether these firms can retain enough strategic talent to compete effectively in a market that increasingly values in-house expertise.
For now, one thing is certain—India’s IT job market is in the middle of a profound shift. The best tech talent is no longer just executing outsourced projects; they are shaping the future of global technology—directly inside the corporations that once hired their employers.
