Companies building AI products placed twice as much cutting‑edge R&D work in India as those adopting third‑party AI, reinforcing India’s rise as a core hub of AI innovation rather than just deployment.
India’s global capability centre (GCC) work portfolio had shifted markedly up the value chain between 2015 and 2026, with complex problem‑solving work growing 38.1 per cent and cutting‑edge R&D work doubling, while the share of commodity and procedure work declined.
This signalled a move from cost‑led delivery to higher‑value capabilities, with nearly half of India’s GCCs now carrying an equal or higher share of frontier work compared with their headquarters.
The findings were released in a joint report by Awfis Space Solutions Ltd, India’s largest flexible workspace platform, and Zinnov, a global consulting and market research firm. The report, The Great Workplace Reset: How India GCCs are Redefining Work, Workforce, and Workspace, is structured across five sections: the India GCC landscape, the changing economics of work, the shift in workforce dynamics, the workspace as an operating decision, and case studies documenting how flexible and managed workspaces have supported GCC scale‑up across India.
The report also found that companies actively building AI products placed twice as much cutting‑edge R&D work in India as those only adopting third‑party AI, reinforcing that India was increasingly the location where core AI innovation was happening, not just where it was deployed.
India now hosted 2,117 GCCs operating 3,728 units nationwide, generating $98.4 billion in estimated revenue for FY2026 and employing more than 2.36 million professionals. The number of GCCs had grown nearly 32 per cent since FY2021, with 506 of the Global 2000 companies now running centres in India.
Adoption had expanded well beyond the Global 2000, with private equity‑backed firms, mid‑market enterprises, and digital native companies increasingly setting up centres. This signalled that the GCC model had evolved into a proven platform for growth and innovation rather than a scale play alone.
Amit Ramani, Chairman & Managing Director, Awfis Space Solutions Ltd., said, “India’s GCCs are no longer just execution centres; they now own products, platforms, and AI‑led mandates, and that kind of strategic mandate cannot be supported by conventional real estate timelines. It demands workspace that moves as fast as the business does, which is exactly why flexible and managed office formats have become the category’s fastest‑growing choice among GCCs.”
Evolving Talent Demand
Talent demand inside these centres was being restructured accordingly. India’s AI/ML talent pool inside GCCs had nearly doubled, from 122,000 professionals in 2023 to a projected 250,000 in 2026, making India the second‑largest AI talent market globally after the US.
Nitika Goel, CMO & Managing Partner, Zinnov, stated, “The centre of gravity of AI work has shifted from invention to industrialisation, and that shift has rewritten the GCC workforce. The specialist we tracked in job descriptions three years ago is now a full‑stack engineer, combining domain depth, AI frameworks, and business context to own outcomes. Once the work and the workforce have changed this much, the workspace decision moves up with them.”
The report positioned workspace as an operating decision rather than a real estate decision, driven by five forces: talent, control, speed, flexibility, and brand. This shift was already visible in the market. In the first quarter of 2026, India recorded its highest‑ever quarterly office leasing volume of 20.7 million sq. ft, with GCCs accounting for 44 per cent of this demand, equal to 9.1 million sq. ft, the most space GCCs had ever absorbed in a single quarter.
The GCC share of leasing had climbed steadily over three consecutive quarters. Of this demand, 64 per cent came from three sectors: ecommerce, BFSI, and technology; 73 per cent came from US‑headquartered companies; and 67 per cent was concentrated in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Flexible workspace uptake among GCCs had followed a similar trajectory. GCCs now account for 40-45 per cent of enterprise flex seat uptake, and the report found that 67 per cent of GCCs plan to grow flex space beyond a tenth of their real estate portfolio.