CHENNAI: India’s hiring in the Global Capability Centre (GCC) ecosystem reported a 12-14% growth, with the majority of talent recruited from IT services and BFSI sectors in the current quarter.
According to the report of Quess, 18-22% talents from IT services moved to GCCs, whereas 15-18% hiring happened from the BFSI sector, followed by manufacturing & engineering, product companies, healthcare & life sciences, retail & e-commerce.
Kapil Joshi, CEO of Quess IT Staffing, claims that the net addition in 2026 in the GCC sector is expected to be 1.8-2 lakh, of which the majority of the employees would be hired from IT services.
In GCC, nearly 60% of hiring happens within GCC, and 40% employees are lateral recruitment, which come from IT services.
The report, “India’s GCC Tech Talent Landscape Q4 FY26”, shows a significant rise in replacement hiring, which now accounts for 40% of all recruitment activity. This trend is driven by shifting workforce dynamics, specifically a decline in Gen Z tenure expectations to under 24 months.
Responding to this rise, Joshi said that with 80-100 GCCs setting up in India every year, the sector has become very competitive.
“Due to this attrition, GCCs have become nearly at par with the IT sector at around 11-12%.”
This high attrition rate, replacement hiring and growing skill gaps are prompting BFSI GCCs, which are gaining momentum in India, to offer a salary premium to employees. BFSI GCCs currently face a 42% gap in AI and data roles. To bridge this deficit, they are offering a 1.5 to 2x salary premium over conventional IT roles.
Tier-1 cities continue to dominate, accounting for 88–90% of GCC hiring, led by Bengaluru and Hyderabad. While Tier-2 cities grew their share to 10–12%, nearly half of all complex technical mandates remain in Tier-1 hubs.
This reinforces a "hub-and-spoke" model, where Tier-1 locations drive innovation while Tier-2 cities focus on execution and operational scale.
Contractual roles comprised 25% of total hiring this quarter. GCCs are increasingly leveraging flexible staffing models to access niche skills quickly and manage project-based surges, particularly for AI and platform-led transformation programs.