India's GCC workforce to reach 3.46 million by 2030 as AI scales up: Report
- IBEF
- November 19, 2025
India’s technology sector is poised for strong expansion, with jobs expected to rise 11% as the workforce grows to 2.4 million by 2026 and 3.46 million by 2030. According to NLB Services, this surge is being driven by global capability centres (GCC) that are transitioning from artificial intelligence (AI) pilots to large-scale deployment. The report highlights that India has reached a pivotal stage in its GCC 4.0 evolution, where centres are integrating AI across operations rather than merely experimenting with it. As a result, GCC workforce projections for 2030 have been revised upward by 30%, adding an estimated 1.3 million new roles. Emerging positions include cybersecurity and AI governance architects, prompt engineers, GenAI product owners, and AI policy and risk strategists, reflecting a rapid shift towards AI-native, product-centric teams.
Simultaneously, several legacy roles are being phased out, particularly L1 information technology (IT) support, legacy application development, manual quality assurance (QA), and on-premises infrastructure management. The report also notes a major geographic rebalancing, with GCCs expanding into Tier II and Tier III cities to build distributed workforce models. Nearly 39% of GCC employees are expected to operate from non-metro locations by 2030, generating more than 7.15 lakh net new jobs. Cities such as Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, and Bhubaneswar are emerging as specialised delivery centres, while Tier I metros will continue to anchor leadership, R&D, and governance functions.
Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.
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