Bengaluru GCC: Tier-2, 3 cities make a small dent in Bengaluru’s GCC growth story

Even as Bengaluru continues to be the hub of global capabilities centres (GCCs) in India, it has seen a 4.4 percentage point fall in its share of GCC units over the past five financial years, according to an analysis by ET.

While the number of GCC units in Bengaluru increased 41% to around 875 in 2023-24 from about 620 in 2018-19, the city’s share fell to 29.4% from 33.8% during this period.

Bengaluru saw slower growth than the rest of the country, with the total number of GCC units across the country increasing 62.5% to 2,975 from 1,830 during the five-year period.

According to Sangeeta Gupta, chief strategy officer, Nasscom, Bengaluru already houses the largest number of GCCs, which have also matured, and many of these companies could have opened their second or third centers in smaller cities.

The Zinnov-Nasscom India GCC Landscape Report said, “India’s tier II and tier III cities are becoming pivotal in scaling up GCCs; house about 7% of total GCC units in FY2024, up from about 5% in FY2019.” Bengaluru and the National Capital Region (NCR) together account for 47% of the IT talent in India’s GCC ecosystem, according to the report.

While Hyderabad saw a marginal fall in its share of GCC units to 12% in 2023-24 from 12.5% five years earlier, Mumbai and Chennai saw a slight increase. While Mumbai’s share went up to 12.2% at about 365 units from 11.7% five years ago, Chennai’s share increased to nearly 10.2% from 9.8%.

In contrast, the NCR had a share of 15.6% in 2023-24 with about 465 units, a marginal increase from 15.5% with 285 units in 2018-19. Pune’s share went up to 12.1% from 11.4% during the five-year period.

“This trend can’t be attributed to any single state government because in the last five years, there were multiple regimes of political parties. Bengaluru, because of its high base and infrastructure bottlenecks, saw this coming,” a person who tracks the GCC growth in India said.