Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday, 9 July 2026, said India is now establishing one new Global Capability Centre (GCC) every day, up from one per week in 2024, and that the country hosts more than half of all GCCs worldwide. She made the remarks while addressing the CII National GCC Business Summit, 2026, in her capacity as the country's top economic policymaker.

Context

Speaking at the summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Sitharaman highlighted a sharp acceleration in GCC formation, noting that India's share of the global GCC footprint now exceeds 50 per cent. 'Few countries in modern economic history have built an innovation ecosystem of this scale and sophistication in such a short period,' she said.

She also drew a distinction between the GCCs of the past and those being established today, arguing that the newer centres are fundamentally different in their mandate and strategic importance to parent corporations.

Policy Backdrop

India's GCC trajectory stretches back to the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) scheme launched in 1991, which provided early infrastructure and fiscal incentives that attracted multinational IT and R&D operations. The Digital India programme, initiated in 2015, further deepened digital infrastructure and skills pipelines, enabling GCCs to take on progressively higher-value functions.

The current wave, Sitharaman noted, is defined by capabilities in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Engineering Research and Development (ERD), Cybersecurity, Digital Platforms, Product Architecture, Financial Innovation, and Enterprise-wide Transformation. She underlined that more than half of new GCCs are now AI-first, and that Engineering Research and Development has emerged as one of the fastest-growing capability areas within the sector.

This shift from back-office and IT support functions — which characterised GCC activity in the 1990s and 2000s — to strategic global hubs for product development and innovation reflects both consistent policy openness to foreign direct investment and a sustained supply of engineering talent.

Stakeholders and Impact

The expansion directly benefits multinational corporations seeking to diversify technology operations amid global geopolitical supply-chain realignments, as well as India's large technology workforce. Industry bodies such as CII have positioned GCCs as a critical pillar of India's ambition to move up the global value chain beyond services exports.

The growing emphasis on AI and ERD within GCCs also has implications for domestic talent development, as demand rises for advanced engineering, data science, and cybersecurity professionals across metro and tier-2 cities alike.

What's Next

Attention will now turn to whether the government follows up with targeted policy measures — including potential incentives in the next Union Budget — to sustain and deepen the GCC momentum, particularly in areas such as semiconductor design and advanced AI research. The trajectory of the IndiaAI Mission and any new R&D-linked fiscal frameworks will be closely watched by industry and investors as indicators of whether policy intent translates into structural support for the next generation of capability centres.