India building ecosystem to support 5,000 GCCs by 2030: Sitharaman

India is building an ecosystem capable of supporting around 5,000 Global Capability Centres (GCCs) by 2030, up from the current 2,100, as the country strengthens its position as the world's leading destination for knowledge and innovation hubs, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday.
Addressing an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Sitharaman said India is now home to more than half of the world's GCCs, making it one of the most significant innovation ecosystems developed in recent economic history."India now hosts more than half of the world's GCCs. Few countries in modern economic history have built an innovation ecosystem of this scale and sophistication in such a short period," she said.Highlighting the rapid pace of expansion, the finance minister noted that while India added one new GCC every week in 2024, the pace has now accelerated to nearly one new centre every day.

India's GCC Story is actually the shift from Scale to Strategic Leadership.

For nearly 3 decades, our success was measured by scale. We counted the number of centres established, the professionals employed and the value of services delivered. But every mature ecosystem… pic.twitter.com/WGkwCtNwn2

— Nirmala Sitharaman Office (@nsitharamanoffc) July 9, 2026

India currently hosts more than 2,100 GCCs, employing around 23 lakh professionals and generating nearly $100 billion in annual revenues. More than 500 companies from the Forbes Global 2000 list have already established GCCs in the country.Despite this growth, Sitharaman said India still has immense untapped potential, pointing out that nearly two-thirds of Fortune Global 2000 companies have yet to set up a GCC in the country."Around two-thirds of the Fortune Global 2000 companies have yet to establish a Global Capability Centre in India. This is one of the largest untapped investment opportunities before us," she said.Calling the 2030 target both practical and achievable, Sitharaman said the ambition to support around 5,000 GCCs marks only one milestone in India's broader growth journey.She also said the next phase of GCC expansion offers significant opportunities in newer markets, including East and West Asia, Eastern Europe, the Nordic countries and Australasia.
Speaking at the event earlier, Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran said India's GCC ecosystem has evolved well beyond its traditional back-office operations and has become a global innovation and technology hub."India has become the second-largest base of enterprise AI talent in the world. The intellectual property created in these centres is real. The patents are filed here. The products are shipped from here," he said.Nageswaran added that an increasing number of global leadership roles are now being managed from India and projected that senior leadership positions based in the country could grow nearly fivefold by 2030."This is no longer the edge of the global economy. In many firms, it has become the core," he said.He further noted that GCCs now contribute nearly 2 per cent to India's GDP while accounting for a growing share of new office space developed across Indian cities each year.