The recent headlines about the Centre finalising a national policy for Global Capability Centres (GCCs) have my full attention. India’s upcoming GCC Policy must build more than ease of doing business. For India, a National Framework for GCC enablement is an opportunity to rethink Brand India. For decades, the global narrative around India was largely built around the idea of the world’s back office. That description and definition has long changed. GCCs today are built to showcase the strength of India’s technology capabilities, demographic dividend and competence. Global headquarters increasingly rely on their India campuses to drive strategy, deploy AI and conduct advanced R&D. The National GCC policy now being finalised should take advantage of this shift and create the conditions for India to move decisively up the value chain.
The first priority should be making India easier to operate from. Single-window clearances should be genuinely frictionless for global enterprises entering India. The national framework should also bring greater consistency across states, while allowing states to compete on infrastructure, talent and sector-specific strengths.
The second is creating a credible multi-hub model. If India is targeting a GCC market that could reach $100 billion to $105 billion by 2030, growth cannot remain concentrated in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi NCR. Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities need to become viable alternatives for global enterprises. Emerging hubs can offer significant cost advantages, while giving companies greater geographic diversification and access to new talent pools. The policy should therefore support the infrastructure, connectivity, skilling and urban ecosystem required to make these locations genuinely competitive.
Tax certainty also needs attention. The 2026 Budget has already moved in this direction, raising the IT services safe-harbour threshold from ₹300 crore to ₹2,000 crore and allowing the 15.5% margin to continue for five years. The new GCC policy should build on this predictability. Expanding predictable mechanisms can give multinational companies the confidence required to make long-term investments in India.
Talent will determine whether this expansion creates real value. India has one of the world’s youngest workforces, but demographics alone do not create future-ready capability. The policy should support structured skilling in generative AI, cloud engineering, cybersecurity, advanced analytics and emerging areas such as quantum computing. The IBM-IIT Madras partnership shows how industry and academia can jointly build future-ready technology skills. GCCs and academic institutions should be encouraged to build industry-led curricula, applied research programmes and talent pipelines around actual enterprise requirements.
There is one more piece I would like to see in the national framework: a deliberate global positioning agenda. Amitabh Kant’s ‘Incredible India campaign’ showed what a sustained national narrative can do in changing how the world sees India. India now has an opportunity to build a similar narrative around its GCC ecosystem.
The proposition needs to move from “setting up operations in India” to “building global capability from India.” Government and industry should take this story to global markets with consistency and scale. Individual GCCs will tell their own stories, but India needs a larger narrative around the technology, innovation and strategic value being built here. The National policy on GCCs should therefore make it easier to set up in India, build capability here and communicate that capability to the world.
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