India’s nearly $100-billion global capability centre (GCC) industry is at an inflection point where hiring is rising, but “portfolio hollowing” has begun. Artificial intelligence is compressing repetitive functions across customer support, finance, Human Resources, analytics and software operations, even as companies continue to expand and add headcount, experts told ET.
Industry experts said AI is shrinking junior-level workflows, reducing standalone procedural functions and pushing multinational companies to redesign the kind of work handled by their India centres. Early industry estimates suggest nearly 18% of India’s GCC work still sits in commoditised, process-heavy functions that are increasingly being automated, embedded into AI-driven workflows or rebuilt by AI-native firms, marking a structural shift in the country’s largest white-collar employment engine.
