India’s Global Capability Centre (GCC) story is entering a new phase, with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday pitching Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities as the country’s next engines of innovation-led growth while calling on industry to expand confidently beyond traditional metropolitan hubs.Addressing the CII GCC Business Summit, Sitharaman said the next chapter of India’s GCC journey “cannot remain confined to a handful of metropolitan centres”, arguing that the country’s innovation ecosystem is becoming increasingly geographically diverse.
“If the first 2,000 GCCs were concentrated in metropolitan centres, the next wave of India’s GCC growth will be geographically far more diverse,” she said, adding that future breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, engineering and product development could emerge from cities such as Varanasi, Chandigarh, Visakhapatnam, Tiruchirappalli and Mysuru as readily as Bengaluru, Hyderabad or Gurugram.
The minister highlighted the pace at which India’s GCC ecosystem is expanding, noting that while the country added one new GCC every week in 2024, it is now establishing one new centre every day on average.India currently hosts more than half of the world’s GCCs, she said, with over half of the newly established centres being AI-first. She added that Indian GCCs are increasingly taking on global leadership mandates, reflecting a shift “from cost efficiency to capability leadership”, as enterprises move beyond minimising costs to maximising innovation and long-term competitiveness.Sitharaman stressed that India’s challenge was “no longer one of catching up” but “to stay ahead continuously”, adding that the ambition should be to ensure a growing share of the world’s ideas, patents, products and enterprise capabilities are conceived and led from India.She also noted that at least 10 states have either announced or are developing dedicated GCC policies, saying she consistently impresses upon state governments the importance of creating supportive policy frameworks tailored to their strengths.The finance minister said the government’s policy push—including safe harbour reforms, university townships and city economic regions announced in the Union Budget—aims to make it easier for companies to expand into emerging cities by strengthening talent, infrastructure and innovation ecosystems. She reiterated the government’s long-term ambition of supporting around 5,000 GCCs by 2030.Addressing industry directly, Sitharaman urged companies to “continue moving decisively up the value chain”, deepen partnerships with universities and start-ups, “expand confidently into our emerging cities”, engage proactively with state governments and local communities, become “credible ambassadors” for India’s capabilities and strengthen collaboration with governments to build a globally competitive GCC ecosystem.
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