Aug 19: Awfis Space Solutions Ltd, India’s largest flexible workspace platform, in partnership with Zinnov, a global management consulting and market research firm, today released a report titled “The Great Workplace Reset: How India GCCs are Redefining Work, Workforce, and Workspace.” The report maps how India’s Global Capability Centers are moving from execution hubs to strategic ownership centers, and how this shift is reshaping hiring, skilling, and real estate decisions across the ecosystem. The report 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 a set of case studies documenting how flexible and managed workspaces have supported GCC scale-up across India.
India now hosts 2,117 GCCs operating 3,728 units across the country, generating USD 98.4 billion in revenue and employing over 2.36 million professionals. The number of GCCs has grown nearly 32% since FY21, and 506 of the Global 2000 companies now run centers in India. The report notes that adoption has expanded well beyond the Global 2000, with PE-backed firms, mid-market enterprises, and digital native companies increasingly setting up centers, signaling that the GCC model has evolved into a proven platform for growth and innovation rather than a scale play alone.
This growth has come with a marked shift in the work itself: India’s GCC work portfolio mix has moved significantly up the value chain between 2015 and 2026, with commodity and procedure work declining. Complex problem solving work grew to 38.1%, and cutting-edge R&D work doubled, signaling a shift from cost-led delivery to higher-value capabilities. Almost half of India’s GCCs now carry an equal or higher share of frontier work compared with their headquarters. The report also finds that companies actively building AI products place 2X more Cutting-edge R&D work in India than companies that are only adopting third-party AI, underscoring that India is increasingly the location where core AI innovation is happening, not just where it is deployed.
Talent demand inside these centers is being restructured accordingly. India’s AI/ML talent pool inside GCCs has 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 United States.
The report positions workspace as an operating decision rather than a real estate decision, driven by five forces: talent, control, speed, flexibility, and brand. This shift is 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, and GCCs accounted for 44% of this demand, equal to 9.1 million sq ft, the most space GCCs have ever absorbed in a single quarter. The GCC share of leasing has climbed steadily over three consecutive quarters. Of this demand, 64% came from three sectors: ecommerce, BFSI, and technology; 73% came from US-headquartered companies, and 67% was concentrated in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Flexible workspace uptake among GCCs has followed a similar trajectory. GCCs now account for 40 to 45% of enterprise flex seat uptake, and the report finds that 67% of GCCs plan to grow flex space beyond a tenth of their real estate portfolio. The report also includes case studies of GCCs that scaled from incubation to over 3,000 seats within months using managed and flexible office formats delivered by Awfis, spanning sectors such as global commerce, healthcare technology, media monitoring, and consumer manufacturing.
As part of its continued partnership with Zinnov, Awfis is also the workspace partner for the 19th edition of Zinnov Confluence 2026, marking the second consecutive year of its association with the flagship industry event, which brings together GCC leaders, enterprise decision makers, and industry experts to discuss the future of global capability centers in India.
Mr. Amit Ramani, Chairman and Managing Director, Awfis Space Solutions Ltd., said,
“”This report validates the trajectory we have built our business around. India’s GCCs are no longer just execution centers, 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.
Awfis has spent this shift building the scale and specialisation to meet this evolving demand, with an integrated model spanning flexible workspaces, managed offices, and Transform by Awfis (Design & Build) that lets us take a center from early incubation to a fully custom, brand led workspace on time. That is precisely the speed and control India’s next generation of GCCs are asking for.”
Nitika Goel, CMO & Managing Partner, Zinnov, said:
“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. It becomes a leadership call across talent, control, speed, flexibility, and brand, and India’s newest GCCs are already making that call at entry.”