Sitharaman Vows to Clear Roadblocks for GCC Growth
Finance minister says government will remove legislative, administrative, and tax bottlenecks to support industry’s next phase of expansion
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Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday urged companies operating global capability centers (GCCs) in India to expand beyond the six established hubs and tap into the potential of tier‑2 and tier‑3 cities, calling it essential to sustain India’s global leadership.
Speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industry’s GCC Summit in New Delhi, she said the government is committed to removing legislative, administrative, and tax bottlenecks to support the sector’s growth.
She pointed to GIFT City as an example of how a unified regulatory and tax framework can support GCC growth, and urged government and industry to work together to replicate such success in other regions to surpass even the current bullish projections.
India’s GCCs currently contribute $68 billion in direct gross value added (or 1.6% of gross domestic product-GDP) and are projected to reach $150–200 billion by 2030.
Employment in the sector has grown at a compound annual rate of 11% over the past five years to 2.16 million professionals, with expectations to rise to 2.8 million by the end of the decade. “These projections are conservative,” Sitharaman noted, urging the industry to accelerate progress.
She described how GCCs have evolved beyond transactional service delivery into high‑value areas such as engineering and R&D, now growing 1.3 times faster than the sector average.
Roles such as product managers, data scientists, and global function heads have become commonplace, reflecting the rising sophistication of work done in India.
Looking back at the country’s GCC journey, she said that it took 30 years to reach the first 1,000 such centers, but the next 1,000 opened in less than a decade after 2015.
“The rapidity with which GCCs grew after 2015 is noteworthy,” she said, calling on companies and policymakers to sustain that momentum.
Industry leaders at the summit endorsed her call for regional expansion and innovation‑led growth.
Ajay Vij, senior country managing director at Accenture India, said many tier‑II and ‑III cities already have infrastructure “that puts the metros to shame” and argued India must “move from being a service‑oriented country to an innovation‑oriented one.”
Deloitte South Asia CEO Romal Shetty projected that with the right policy environment, the number of GCCs in India could grow to as many as 5,000 by 2030, supporting up to 25 million jobs.
Sitharaman underscored India’s structural advantages: the country accounts for 32% of global GCC talent, 28% of the world’s STEM workforce, and 23% of software engineers, while offering a 30–50% cost advantage over peers like the US, UK, and Australia.
She also cited India’s leadership in AI skills, referencing the 2024 Stanford AI Index which shows a 263% surge in AI talent concentration since 2016.
Government‑backed investments in AI centers of excellence and doctoral research programs, she added, are designed to consolidate India’s position as a global AI hub.
She credited recent Union budgets for improving the policy environment through tax clarity and governance reforms, and promised continued support through streamlined approvals and single‑window systems.
“We shall ensure that all of us are going to be in this together,” she said, encouraging both central and state governments to partner actively with industry.
