India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are increasingly creating AI and digital talent internally by enabling professionals with adjacent technical skills to transition into the emerging technology roles, rather than relying solely on external hiring, according to a new report.
Released by staffing solutions firm Quess Corp based on the firm’s internal data and secondary sources, the India GCC Tech Talent Landscape – Q1 FY27 Report suggests the industry’s preference for “ready-to-deploy” talent over broad-based hiring.
“Backend Developers are moving into Applied AI Engineer roles, Data Scientists into ML and Model Operations Engineering, Data Engineers into AI Data Platform Engineering, Cloud Engineers into Platform Engineering, QA Automation Engineers into Autonomous QA Engineering, Cybersecurity Analysts into Cloud Security Engineering, and DevOps Engineers into DevSecOps Engineering,” said a statement from Quess Corp, suggesting an increasing focus on specialisation.
According to the report, Bengaluru remains the largest GCC tech hub by hiring share. However, Hyderabad is growing faster, supported by cloud, data engineering, and fintech infrastructure demand, signalling a broader tier-1 redistribution beyond Bengaluru, it notes.
Professionals with four to twelve years of experience accounted for around 56% of total hiring demand in Q1 FY27, underscoring the GCCs’ continued preference for experienced talent who are capable of taking on specialised technology roles.
Overall hiring remained steady during the quarter, growing by around 5-6% quarter-on-quarter, with demand concentrated across AI, Data and Analytics, Platform Engineering, Cloud and Infrastructure Engineering, and Cybersecurity.
AI and Data and Analytics remained the fastest-growing capability areas, followed by Platform Engineering, Cloud and Infrastructure Engineering, and Cybersecurity and Risk Management.
However, a significant supply-demand gap was also recorded in these areas. The largest supply-demand gap, between 36% and 40%, was noted in AI, Data and Analytics
The report also highlights how smaller GCCs have been recording the fastest hiring growth while the larger centres continue to account for the biggest share of demand.
The GCCs with fewer than 500 employees recorded around 8% hiring growth quarter-on-quarter. Whereas organisations with 1,000–5,000 employees accounted for around 40% of the total GCC hiring demand.
Professional Services and Consulting was found to be the fastest-growing GCC sector, recording around 9% quarter-on-quarter growth and accounting for 10.3% of the total hiring demand.
Technology and Product followed with around 7% growth, while the Manufacturing and Industrial sector remained the largest hiring sector with a 25.1% share. BFSI accounted for 20.9% of hiring demand. Telecom and Networks was the only sector to record a contraction during the quarter.
While tier-1 cities continued to account for the largest share of the hiring demand, tier-2 cities increased their share to around 11–13%.
Speaking on the development, Kapil Joshi, CEO, Quess IT Staffing, said: “Rather than competing for a limited pool of specialised talent, GCCs are increasingly investing in role-adjacent reskilling to transform existing engineering talent into AI, cloud, and platform specialists.”
“The next chapter of India’s GCC growth will be defined less by the scale of hiring and more by the ability to continuously create new capabilities. Organisations that successfully combine AI adoption with workforce transformation will position India not just as the world’s technology talent hub, but as a global centre for enterprise innovation and product leadership,” he added.
Published - July 15, 2026 08:07 pm IST