India's GCC Boom: Is Your Skillset AI Ready?
In 2024, GenAI adoption witnessed its highest-ever growth rate (32%), driven by BFSI, retail, and others.
6 JUNE 2025 / 2 min read
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the ability to improve productivity and performance while reshaping businesses worldwide. This potential of AI and its impact has triggered fears of job displacement across boardrooms and breakrooms alike.
However, there are two sides to the story. According to a recent survey by consulting firm Zinnov, 63% of Indians are optimistic about AI’s potential to create new job opportunities, while 68% remain concerned about the job displacement. Today, AI is not pushing workers out of jobs but is instead steering them towards upskilling and reskilling. For India’s approximately 1.9 million workforce in the global capability centre (GCC) sector, staying relevant amid changing business dynamics is more crucial than ever.
For GCCs to scale, innovation will be a key growth driver besides operational efficiency and delivery execution. Boston Consulting Group (BCG)’s latest report rightly points out that advanced AI use cases–such as generative AI, natural language processing and AI agents–are critical accelerators of GCC maturity.
With the global digital economy growing at a fast pace, hiring is expected to rise in the Indian GCC space, home to more than 1,950 centres. A report by Quess Corp projects increased recruitment in sectors such as BFSI, manufacturing, automotive, energy, technology, and retail. There is an increase in demand for skills like data engineering, cloud architecture, AI for risk and compliance, cybersecurity, and zero-trust security, as digital complexity and transaction volumes surge.
Demand for skills such as creative problem-solving and critical thinking is also rising. Despite the tech advancements, human intervention is crucial to navigate ambiguity, design user-centric experiences and bridge the gap between people and machines.
Today, digital transformation is also reshaping industries like manufacturing, life sciences and pharmaceuticals. In the GCC landscape, roles such as cybersecurity engineers, financial crime analysts, personalisation and recommendation engineers, are in high demand, the Quess report noted.
According to a recent media report, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company, is set to hire about 1200 people in India to ramp up its AI capabilities and strengthen its support centres across the country. Similarly, Randstad India, a talent service provider, plans to hire more than 15,000 people to meet the rising demand in AI and the GCC sector.
Technology alignment with core strategic objectives, aiming to achieve agility, resilience, and sustainability is the need of the hour. The businesses worldwide now are looking for skills in digital transformation and sustainability. Investment in the right talent, embedding AI across services is expected to fuel the next wave of growth.
With the workforce in GCCs in India expected to reach over 2.4 million people by 2030, the opportunities are self-evident for AI-ready professionals.
