What are the Global Captive Centers in India? Their Evolving Landscape

What Are Global Captive Centres?

Global Captive Centers (GCCs) are centres of excellence, set up by large multinational companies to provide tech services, R&D, engineering, IT support, and business process outsourcing, and develop innovative solutions and business practices. Developing countries like India are ideal destinations for MNCs to set up Global Captive Centres. 

India currently accounts for around 45% of global captive centres in operations across sectors such as BFSI, software, automotive, pharmaceuticals, retail, oil, and gas. It continues to be the destination of choice for multinational companies for setting up GCCs. A NASSCOM survey revealed that MNCs are likely to set up 500 new Global Captive Centers (GCCs) in India by 2025. 

Hiring Trend for Global Captive Centers in India in 2023

Despite the global economic concerns, there has been an increase in demand for talent in the market due to the surge in service demand in key global markets. Around 78% of the GCCs have made it clear that they are looking to increase their talent pool by 10-100%.  

GCCs will be adding close to 3.64 lakh jobs by 2023, and there will be a huge scale-up in the sector from the current economic value of $35.9 billion to $60-85 billion by 2026. Currently, GCCs are showing a contribution of 1% to the GDP and are expected to grow to 2% in the next three years. 

The sectors that topped the chart were IT software and consulting, with 33% of respondents keen on ramping up their talent pool, followed by banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), and internet and telecom with 21% and 16% respectively.  

India continues to outshine in growth strategy and is expected to see a CAGR growth of 10.8% in employment in 2023 alone. The demand for talent in India is expected to grow further. Amongst all the top-tier cities in India, Bengaluru has topped the list in terms of job creation for GCCs. 

While India has been established as the perfect, sustainable place for GCCs that leverage talent and capabilities in the country, GCCs have also contributed significantly in return. A report generated by Deloitte shows a comprehensive approach to gauge the value delivered by GCCs to India’s growth story and provides a view of what’s next. 

GCCs make a considerable impact in India across multiple dimensions:

• Economic– Direct and indirect impact on Gross Domestic Product, taxation, and employment
• Human capital– Impact on employees’ professional growth, leadership pipeline for the nation, and equal opportunities at work
• Innovation and ecosystem– Deployment of technology and enablement of cross-sector development to create an ecosystem of talent, start-ups, and corporates that leads to innovation for the nation
• Social impact– in communities through fund allocation, volunteering for social initiatives, a helping hand to make NGOs and their programmes more effective
• Environmental– Global sustainability principles are being formulated and practiced, leading to a better environmental sustainability outlook for the nation
• Reputational– Supporting the parent organisation in a way that showcases India as a country suitable for skills arbitrage.

Key highlights of GCC contributing to the Indian capital market 

• GCCs in Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad comprise ~9 million square feet of prime office space, which is the key asset underlying Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).  
• They contribute to accounting firms and law firms expanding their transfer pricing teams, generating high-skilled employment. 
• The majority of GCCs have formal vendor relationships for F&B and transportation services, and blue-collar employment. 

GCCs’ geographic coverage in India 

1. Bengaluru has the highest share of GCCs and is the destination of choice for platform engineering  
2. With the rise in IT hubs in the city, Hyderabad is emerging as the key contender to Bengaluru 
3. Increasing movement to Tier-2 cities such as Trivandrum, Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, and Jaipur, with a focus on CoEs or niche capability centers.
4. Pune and Chennai are dominated by automotive GCCs, and Mumbai is dominated by BFSI GCCs

What are the Skills and Roles in Demand?

Data science, data analytics, data engineering, statistical analysis, and UI/UX design are the most in-demand skills as per GCCs. 12 % of the GCCs also rated communications, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills as the most sought-after behaviour skills. 

With 1 million engineers graduating each year, India has the largest population of engineers in the world, which has made international companies realize the importance of leveraging this demographic deficit effectively.  

The highest skill gap was found to be in the most desired skills, like Python programming, data analysis, and SQL/Hadoop specialists.  

Skills that are most relevant to the model, like business operations, Strategic management, sales engineering, and corporate communication skills, faced a skill gap of as high as 38%.  

Opportunities for the Recruitment & Staffing Industry

While the growing demand for skills is creating ample job opportunities for India, which is great news, what’s even better is that this new wave of Global Captive Centers is coming up with new centres focused on technological innovation rather than the traditional approach that led to cost advantage and arbitrage. Business leaders are recognizing that India has the maximum potential to provide the scale of high-quality skills they need in science and technology, out of all the countries in the world. 

It’s time for recruitment firms to gear up and be on their A-game, as Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) seems to be the most preferred mode of talent acquisition (22%), according to a study.  

With the growing demand for talent, organizations will need a robust talent acquisition partner that will allow them to unburden themselves of hiring talent and focus on their core business areas, and hiring an RPO partner fits perfectly in this scenario.  

67% of GCCs have shown interest in hiring for permanent job positions, and 21% prefer temporary employment. A large number of GCCs expressed the need to promote gender diversity hiring, while only a few others indicated specific gender preferences, according to the study. In comparison to IT services firms and startups, hiring by GCCs remains strong, but is subject to the influence of the global slowdown on parent MNCs having captive centres in India. 

While there is a cautionary outlook on hiring for GCC due to the current state of economic slowdown, specialized skills, domain knowledge, and talent, especially mid-level talent with 5-10 years of experience, will continue to be in demand.  

With the growth of GCCs, their ability to create new, significant value for their parent organization from India enhances India’s reputation not just for GCCs but also for 3rd party service providers operating out of India. As a third-party service provider, our RPO and Staffing solutions are tailor-made to suit our clients’ workforce requirements. Alp has a huge team of 500+ recruiters with expertise in both permanent recruitments as well as contract staffing with short TAT and world-class service delivery and support.

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