A quiet but clear shift is taking place in India’s technology services sector as major IT firms move to align closely with Global Capability Centres (GCC). HCL Tech recently announced the appointment of Kiran Cherukuri as head of its GCC business. A business daily reported that Tech Mahindra is set to name Santosh Jha as its GCC head though the company has not confirmed it. Similar leadership moves have also been made by Infosys Wipro and Cognizant in recent weeks highlighting how central GCCs have become to future growth plans.
For large Indian IT services companies this is an opportunity that is hard to ignore. GCCs have evolved from back office units into in house innovation centres that create intellectual property and drive advanced engineering work. This has pushed both sides to explore deeper partnerships. Industry observers say a new phase is emerging where IT services firms and GCCs work together to meet shared process and technology needs while unlocking new growth avenues.
GCCs continue to expand rapidly and generated $64.4 billion in revenue in 2024 25 growing at nearly 10% CAGR. Intellectual property has become the key focus area for both sides. The big question is whether IT services companies can offer plug and play tools and whether joint vertical or domain focused platforms can be developed into scalable IP. Ownership and control of such IP will be closely watched as competitors collaborate and smaller firms also enter the GCC space. Working as a consortium could offer gains but it also raises high stakes decisions around value sharing.
Expansion into new cities is another shared priority as GCCs look to tap wider talent pools and IT services firms follow. Stable annuity like revenue from GCC partnerships is attractive for IT companies while GCCs see value in monetising their India operations through these alliances. As one industry expert put it “GCCs are no longer just execution arms. They have become innovation hubs focused on IP creation verticalized solutions and next gen capabilities in AI cybersecurity and platform engineering.” The expert added that “GCCs and IT services firms are no longer on opposite ends of the spectrum. They are now nodes in the same value network one driving depth and the other delivering scale. Coopetition is not a compromise it is the new calculus of innovation.”
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