American companies will not be able to move the work back to the US as the cost efficiencies and access to vast STEM talent pool that India brings cannot be replicated in near-shore centers in the US
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Sumedha Lakmal
India’s booming GCC ecosystem is likely to stay immune to the souring business relations between India and the US in the near-term, given the strategic contribution of talent in India’s GCCs to parent US corporations. This, coupled the US’ trade surplus with India when it comes to services, makes Indian captive centers of American companies reasonably safe, say industry trackers.
More attractive
American companies will not be able to move the work back to the US as the cost efficiencies and access to vast STEM talent pool that India brings cannot be replicated in near-shore centers in the US. This has made India more attractive for tech, analytics, and operations roles for American companies, they add.
KS Viswanathan, an independent tech advisor and a former VP at Nasscom, says India’s technology and software skills are not replicable in the US in the near-term, and it will take considerable years for US companies to achieve the same cost and talent efficiencies in near-shore centres. The cost of hiring tech talent in the US — even outside of states like California — is close to 7-8x of the Indian talent cost, he adds.
Shalini Pillay, India Leader – Global Capability Centres KPMG in India, said India will continue to remain a key hub for GCCs, given its scale, talent depth and established GCC infrastructure. “India’s talent ecosystem maturity far outpaces most other competing locations,” she said.
Balasubramanian Sankaranarayanan – GCC and Digital Health Evangelist and Partner, Spoonfeed Solutions, says that even in terms of optics, it is more beneficial for American companies to project GCCs as their own captives (insourcing) and an alternative to outsourcing work to Indian IT services firms. In recent months, there has also been increased traction in non-US companies picking India to set up GCCs, he adds.
Gaurav Vasu, Founder & CEO, UnearthInsight, points out that it is not easy for the US to look at other markets for services unlike goods imports. “Malaysia, Philippines and other Asian destinations plus eastern European geographies have one-fourth the scale in terms of talent in comparison to India. For instance, the Philippines’ entire tech & BPM industry has 1.6 million total talent,” he said.
“The current 2 million GCC workforce is a formidable economic and strategic advantage for American companies, and many of them do transformational work for their global operations. Replicating them anywhere in the world, let alone in the US, even by a small percentage, will be hard to execute,” said Kamal Karanth, co-founder of specialist staffing firm Xpheno. In fact, the bigger threat to India’s GCCs would be AI, which would reduce the rule-based tasks, he adds.
Tariff tensions
However, depending on how the tariff tensions progress and the volatile nature of the US President, experts expect US-based GCCs in India to stay silent on any new investment or expansion plans to manage optics. They will look to manage perceptions around Indian operations for a while, they add.
KPMG’s Pillay said while tariffs on services trade is unlikely in the immediate term, if tensions deepen, it could push companies to diversify delivery locations. “Rather than an exodus from India, one will see some multi-hub strategies emerge with India plus 1-2 smaller Asian (or nearshore) hubs for redundancy and market access,” she said.
“With tariff changes clouding the business climate, many companies are taking longer to commit to new investments, causing a short-term slowdown in GCC registrations through September. Even so, momentum is expected to pick up,” added UnearthInsight’s Vasu.
With inputs from Rohan Das
Published on August 11, 2025
