India’s GCCs power 22.5% of AI demand, cement 1.26 lakh talent base

Over 13% of all GCC employees are now directly engaged in AI-driven work, according to ANSR.

India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) have emerged as the single-largest engine of enterprise AI talent, now accounting for 22.5 percent of the country’s overall AI demand, according to ANSR’s AI Talent Trends in India’s GCCs Report 2025.

The report shows that GCCs have built a 126,600-strong AI-aligned workforce inside Fortune 500 global centres, with 18,300 of them in core AI roles such as machine learning engineering, Gen AI, LLMOps, and data science.

“What's happening in the market is that there's a huge move towards companies looking at building with AI and for AI. And for that, there's a need for specialised talent. Today, that talent is available abundantly in markets like India. This is obviously going to become more and more relevant as it continues to scale,” Vikram Ahuja, Co-Founder of ANSR, told Moneycontrol.

Over 13 percent of all GCC employees are now directly engaged in AI-driven work, a shift that signals the transition of these centres from cost-driven hubs to enterprise AI command centres.

By tapping into India’s deep engineering pool and strengthening internal mobility programs, GCCs are converting software, data, and cloud talent into production-grade AI specialists at scale.

India’s AI ecosystem itself has reached a new threshold, with AI skill penetration now 2.5 times the global average and talent concentration rising 252 percent between 2016 and 2024, a rate that outpaces the US, Germany, and the UK.

The report also highlights a reversal in AI talent migration trends, with 2024 showing no net negative movement of AI professionals for the first time, supported by the rise of high-value GCC roles and a maturing domestic ecosystem.

As enterprises accelerate adoption timelines, GCCs are entering the “AI orchestration” phase, building Centres of Excellence, formal governance layers, and LLMOps infrastructure for enterprise-wide deployment.

The next stage, expected post-2028, is the embedding of autonomous agentic AI systems across global operations, eventually positioning GCCs as enterprise intelligence partners delivering real-time predictive insight.

This shift is also redistributing AI talent geographically.

While Bengaluru continues to lead with 29 percent of India’s AI talent, Tier-2 locations such as Kochi, Coimbatore, and Ahmedabad are emerging as cost-efficient nodes for GenAI delivery and DataOps, forming a multi-city AI execution network for global firms.

“So Bangalore obviously has, you know, more density of GCCs and talent as well. And that's leading to a very aggressive sort of growth in terms of the market. And Mumbai is a close second. Mumbai obviously has a lot of BFSI concentration,” Ahuja added.

With a 16.4 percent CAGR in AI workforce expansion and a scalable supply of adjacent tech talent, GCCs are expected to remain the dominant force shaping India’s enterprise AI landscape through 2030.