India’s $98 billion GCC story: How AI and new operating models are changing the game

By Ashwini Kumar Kamble, Chief Growth and Strategy Officer, Neebal Technologies

India’s Global Capability Centre (GCC) industry has outgrown its own forecasts. In FY24, the country’s 1,700-plus GCCs generated $64.6 billion in revenue and employed over 1.9 million people. By FY26, according to Nasscom and Zinnov, India hosted 2,117 GCCs employing around 2.36 million professionals and generating an estimated $98.4 billion. That is roughly $34 billion added in just two years, bringing the industry close to the $99–105 billion that had been projected for 2030.

Two developments explain much of this acceleration: the rise of AI, and a new generation of partners helping global firms build in India. Two very different companies show how these forces are playing out.

The first is Bengaluru-based ANSR, a GCC enabler that helps global enterprises design, build, operate and scale their capability centres. It handles everything from legal entity set-up and infrastructure to talent acquisition and day-to-day operations. The company says it has supported more than 225 GCCs globally and hired over 250,000 employees for them. That scale has drawn significant investor interest. In July 2024, Accenture acquired a 23% stake for about $170 million, valuing ANSR at around $700 million, and in July 2026, reports indicated Accenture was in talks to take a majority stake at a valuation of nearly $1 billion.

Where ANSR shows the shift at the scale of an industry, the second example shows it at the level of a single client. Carr, Riggs & Ingram (CRI), a US accounting and advisory firm backed by private equity firms Centerbridge Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, ranked No. 23 on Accounting Today’s 2026 Top 100 Firms list, with $601 million in revenue and about 2,700 employees. Five years ago, it started its India operation with just three people through Bahwan CyberTek (BCT).

BCT is a Chennai-headquartered digital transformation company with IT services, outsourcing and digital platform businesses serving customers across the US, the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. As of 2024, it reported $330 million in revenue, more than 1,000 active customers and annual growth of 32%. Under a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model, BCT builds and runs the CRI centre, with CRI eventually taking ownership of the operation, its talent and its IP. What began with three people now has around 200 professionals across six functions, and houses CRI’s AI Centre of Excellence, which is working on more than 20 use cases across audit, tax and advisory.

Different as they are, both examples point to the same change: the model has moved from renting capacity to building capability. In each case, scale followed trust. Functions moved to India only once earlier work had proven itself, and over time the question changed from what could be moved offshore to what could be built there.

AI is now accelerating that shift, but it is also exposing a contradiction at the heart of the old model. If a task that once took ten hours now takes two, hourly billing penalises the very efficiency clients want. This is why pricing is starting to move from effort to outcome. At CRI, some AI-led engagements are already shifting from time-and-material billing to fixed-price and outcome-based structures, where the question is no longer how many hours were logged but what the work achieved.

As pricing ties more closely to value, ownership naturally becomes the end goal. With AI central to how services are delivered, firms increasingly want that capability on their own balance sheet rather than a vendor’s. This is why BOT is moving from a niche route to a mainstream entry strategy.
Ownership, however, is only as valuable as the people behind it, and talent requirements are being redefined just as quickly. According to foundit, nearly two in three new GCC roles in 2026 require AI, data science or intelligent automation skills. Domain knowledge remains essential, but professionals must now also know how to build, validate and govern AI.

For global firms, the lessons are practical. The model should match the mandate: a focused BOT partnership suits deep, domain-specific capability, while a platform enabler suits speed and multi-function scale. India centres should be treated as innovation hubs, not cost centres. Outcome-based pricing is worth piloting on AI-led work before the market forces the issue. And clarity on ownership and investment in reskilling need to be built in from the start.

India’s GCC industry has, in two years, come close to a milestone forecasts had placed at the end of the decade. The next phase will not be measured by headcount alone, but by the capability India builds and the firms prepared to own it.