India’s Growing GCC Sector Brings Greenfield Setup and Regulatory Compliance into Focus

September 24, 2026

India opened 111 new greenfield Global Capability Centres (GCCs) between January and August 2026, a pace faster than all of 2025, when it took the full year to reach the 100-centre milestone, according to industry data reported this month. These new centres are expected to create up to 75,000 jobs and deliver an estimated USD 2.8 billion in annual economic impact, adding fresh demand for commercial real estate and skilled technology talent.

This surge in greenfield GCC establishment is unfolding alongside one of the most significant regulatory transitions Indian business has seen in years, the phased rollout of India's four labour codes and its Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, putting business setup, entity structuring, and compliance planning squarely at the centre of how multinational companies now need to approach GCC expansion in India.

Why Are Global Capability Centres Expanding in India?

India now hosts 2,117 GCCs operating across 3,728 units and employing around 2.36 million professionals, according to the 2026 NASSCOM-Zinnov GCC Landscape Report. The ecosystem generated approximately USD 98.4 billion in FY26 revenue, while 506 Forbes Global 2000 companies now operate GCCs in India.

The pace of new GCC launches has also continued through 2026. UAE-based real estate firm DAMAC Group launched a GCC in Noida to manage finance, sales, and digital initiatives, with another centre planned in Pune. US cybersecurity firm Deepwatch opened a Bengaluru centre focused on AI-driven threat detection. In December 2025, JPMorgan Chase also announced plans for what has been reported as Asia’s largest GCC in Mumbai’s Powai district.

This growth reflects a broader shift in how global companies use their Indian operations. GCCs are increasingly supporting product development, AI, data engineering, and strategic decision-making, alongside traditional back-office and cost-focused functions.

What is Involved in Setting Up a GCC in India, and What Operating Structures Are Available?

Establishing a GCC in India requires a foreign company to decide on its entry structure before it can begin company incorporation, hire staff, or lease facilities. The most common approach is a wholly owned subsidiary, typically incorporated as a private limited company, which gives the parent company full operational and management control over the India entity. Some companies instead pursue a joint venture with an Indian partner, sharing ownership, risk, and local market knowledge, though this generally involves more complex governance arrangements than a wholly owned structure.

A third approach, the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model, involves a third-party GCC services provider establishing and initially operating the centre on the client's behalf, with the option to transfer full ownership and operational control to the client company at a later, pre-agreed stage, an approach some companies use to reduce upfront setup complexity while retaining the option of full ownership once the centre is established and stable.

What Regulatory Requirements Apply to GCC Operations in India?

Beyond company incorporation under the Companies Act, GCC operators need to navigate a regulatory environment that has changed substantially over the past year. India's four Labour Codes—the Code on Wages, Industrial Relations Code, Code on Social Security, and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code were implemented with effect from November 21, 2025, consolidating 29 central labour laws.

Separately, the DPDP Rules, 2025 were notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on November 13, 2025, giving India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 a defined, phased implementation roadmap for the first time. Both frameworks directly affect how GCCs, which typically handle substantial volumes of employee and customer data, and employ large local workforces, structure their operations, contracts, and internal compliance systems.

What Employment and Workforce Requirements Should GCC Operators Consider?

Under the new labour codes, companies need to review their wage structures, employment contracts, and contractor agreements to ensure compliance with the updated requirements. The wage definition can affect how compensation is structured, particularly where excluded components exceed the permitted threshold. Companies may therefore need to revise existing salary structures rather than simply carry over models used in other markets.

The codes also increase the threshold for government permission for retrenchment to establishments with 300 or more workers, subject to the applicable provisions and rules. For GCCs expanding rapidly from small teams to larger operations, addressing wage structures and contractual requirements early can help reduce the need for costly changes later.

What Data Protection and Compliance Requirements Affect GCCs in India?

The DPDP Act's implementation is proceeding in phases rather than all at once. Provisions establishing the Data Protection Board of India took effect immediately upon notification in November 2025, and the Board is now operational. A further phase begins in November 2026, requiring companies to have consent management systems, data breach response procedures, and data protection impact assessments in place.

Full compliance across all substantive obligations including notice and consent requirements, breach notification, and data principal rights handling becomes mandatory by May 13, 2027, with penalties for non-compliance reaching up to INR 250 crore per violation.

As the DPDP Act applies to the processing of digital personal data within India regardless of where a company is headquartered and can apply extraterritorially where processing relates to offering goods or services to individuals in India, GCCs handling data on behalf of global parent companies need to treat 2026 as a preparation year for these obligations rather than waiting until the 2027 deadline approaches.

What Should Companies Consider When Selecting a Location for a GCC?

India's GCC ecosystem remains concentrated in a handful of established hubs, Bengaluru holds roughly 40% of the national GCC count, followed by Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, and the National Capital Region, but tier-2 cities including Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Lucknow are increasingly viable alternatives, offering lower operational costs and growing talent pools.

Pune's own trajectory illustrates this shift: the city grew from around 210 GCCs in 2019 to more than 360 by 2025. Each location carries a different combination of talent availability, cost, and attrition dynamics, and for GIFT City specifically, IFSC-regulated entities such as IFSC Banking Units and foreign banks' IFSC branches have emerged as a distinct location category tied to specific regulatory frameworks rather than general commercial considerations.

What Should Foreign Companies Evaluate Before Establishing GCC Operations in India?

Taken together, the pace of GCC expansion and the current regulatory transition mean that foreign companies now need to evaluate entry structure, location, workforce and compensation design, and data compliance readiness as an integrated set of decisions rather than sequential afterthoughts once operations have already begun. A company that selects its entity structure and location without factoring in labour-code wage requirements, or that treats DPDP compliance as a 2027 problem rather than a 2026 build year, risks compliance gaps that are considerably more expensive to fix retroactively than to design correctly from the outset.

India added more new GCCs in the first eight months of 2026 than it did in all of 2025, even as the country's labour and data protection regulatory frameworks are still moving through their own multi-year implementation timeline. For the multinational companies driving this expansion, getting the entity structure, workforce compliance, and data protection framework right from day one will matter as much to a GCC's long-term success as the facility it operates from.

IMARC Engineering’s Perspective

India's GCC sector is expanding at a pace, 111 new greenfield centres in the first eight months of 2026 alone, that is placing real pressure on how quickly companies can move from a market-entry decision to an operating facility, at the same time as India's labour and data protection frameworks are moving through their own significant transition.

At IMARC Engineering, our relevance to this discussion sits specifically at the facility and infrastructure layer of GCC setup: once a company has determined its entity structure and location with appropriate legal and tax advice, we support the physical establishment of a greenfield GCC campus or office facility, including site assessment, workplace and office infrastructure planning, and building services and fit-out engineering suited to a modern technology-driven workforce.

Entity structuring, labour-code compliance, and DPDP readiness are legal and regulatory workstreams that require specialist legal and compliance advisors; what we bring is the engineering discipline that ensures the physical facility a GCC operates from is designed, built, and commissioned on a timeline that keeps pace with the aggressive headcount and operational ramp-up many new India GCCs are targeting.