The rise of tier-2 GCCs: How digital infrastructure is redefining India’s technology talent map

For the better part of two decades, India’s Global Capability Centre (GCC) story was really a story about four or five cities. Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and the NCR belt carried the weight of an entire national narrative. Everything else was peripheral, at least on paper. That script is changing now, and faster than most anticipated even two years ago.

As of FY2025, India hosts more than 1,800 operational GCCs, accounting for nearly 55 percent of the global total. These centres employ close to 1.9 million technology professionals and generated $76 billion in direct economic output in FY2025, reflecting a 13 percent compound annual growth rate sustained since 2010. India’s broader technology sector is now expected to cross $300 billion in revenue in FY2026, with GCCs playing a central role in that growth. By FY2030, the GCC count is projected to exceed 2,400, employing 2.8 million professionals and generating an estimated $110 billion in economic value.

What is more interesting than the headline numbers is where the next wave of growth is physically going. NASSCOM data points to a 30 to 40 percent rise in GCC demand from Tier-2 cities in the coming years, with Coimbatore, Indore, Jaipur, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar and Chandigarh emerging as credible alternatives to traditional metro hubs.

The reason is not difficult to understand. The Tier-1 cities that built India’s GCC reputation are now facing the consequences of their own success. Bengaluru saw office rental costs climb approximately 20 percent in just the first quarter of 2025. Attrition in metro markets remains persistently high. Competition for experienced talent has become expensive enough that global firms are questioning whether they need to be in those markets for every function, or whether certain capabilities can be built elsewhere with considerably less friction.

Tier-2 cities are answering that question well. Lease rates in emerging GCC locations run 30 to 50 percent lower than comparable Grade-A spaces in major metros. But cost alone never tells the whole story. Framing Tier-2 GCC growth purely as a cost arbitrage play misses what is actually happening on the ground.

India produces over 2.5 million STEM graduates annually, the second-largest output in the world by volume, and a significant share comes from institutions outside the six primary metro cities. For years, those graduates migrated to Bengaluru or Hyderabad because that is where the opportunities were. The expanding GCC footprint in their home cities is beginning to reverse that pattern. Companies entering Coimbatore or Indore are finding locally rooted talent that is technically strong, highly motivated and more likely to stay.

Retention rates in Tier-2 locations consistently outperform metro benchmarks. For a global firm building a centre where continuity matters, that stability carries genuine economic value.

State governments have read this moment clearly. Maharashtra’s GCC Policy 2025 explicitly categorises locations into zones, offering higher payroll subsidies and power tariff incentives to companies that choose to set up outside the primary metro corridor. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have introduced their own frameworks with similar intent. These are not token gestures. They represent deliberate policy alignment with a shift that was already happening organically on the ground.

Digital infrastructure has been the quiet enabler behind all of this. Five years ago, a legitimate objection to building serious technology work in a Tier-2 city was connectivity and reliability. That objection carries far less weight today. Cloud adoption, high-speed fibre rollout and the normalisation of hybrid working models have together removed barriers that once made these locations feel like a compromise. A software engineering team in Coimbatore today collaborates with counterparts in the US or Germany with the same ease as one sitting in Bengaluru. The geography gap has compressed enough that distributed GCC models are genuinely viable rather than merely aspirational.

What this means for technology partners and service providers is worth examining directly. The Tier-2 expansion is not just a location story. It is a service and infrastructure opportunity. These cities need managed IT layers, cloud architecture, workforce enablement platforms, and skilling ecosystems that their Tier-1 counterparts built over many years. That gap is a real opening for partners who move early before the market gets crowded.

India’s technology talent map is being redrawn. The cities doing the redrawing are not the ones that have held the spotlight until now. For organisations that look past the familiar names and engage seriously with what is being built in smaller cities, the opportunity ahead is considerable. The window to build an early advantage in these markets will not stay open indefinitely.