With more than 1,800 GCCs in India, the growth momentum continues to be strong—according to CBRE India, 45% of total office space in the first quarter of 2025 was leased by GCCs. Yet this growth masks a hard reality: setting up a GCC in India and scaling it to a sustainable size is rife with challenges. From navigating regulation and compliance to finding the right talent and achieving critical mass, the process is complex and unforgiving.
The difference between GCCs that thrive and those that stagnate often lies in the quality of local partnership. Without the right strategic partner, businesses risk costly delays, talent attrition, and missed opportunities. With the right partner, they accelerate market entry, de-risk operations, and scale at speed—turning their Innovation centre into a true value-creation engine.
The Strategic Hurdles GCCs FaceScaling at Pace:These innovation centres are under pressure to scale rapidly and take advantage of cost-efficiencies. Yet talent acquisition, onboarding, and cultural integration remain major roadblocks. As Innovation centres move up the value chain and take on advanced work in AI, automation, cloud engineering, product development, and R&D, attracting top-tier talent in an intensely competitive market becomes critical. Rapid onboarding and sustained productivity require deep local insights, innovative talent strategies, and a compelling employer value proposition.
Establishing Centers of Excellence (CoEs):Building CoEs is where GCCs deliver their highest value—but it is also where most struggle. CoEs must align with global objectives, standardize best practices, and create an innovation-friendly culture. Defining the right scope, hiring domain experts, and fostering experimentation in a fast-changing landscape is a high-stakes exercise.
Securing Niche Skills:With GCCs transforming into innovation hubs, the demand for scarce skills in AI/ML, cybersecurity, and data science has triggered a talent war. Retaining such talent requires not just competitive compensation, but compelling career pathways, stimulating work, and a globally connected culture.
Avoiding Dilution of Focus:Supporting low-value or short-term projects can distract GCCs from their core mandate—innovation, R&D, and transformation. Fragmented efforts undermine knowledge accumulation and delay the evolution into a strategic innovation hub.
Ensuring Governance & Compliance:Operating across geographies, GCCs must adhere to local and international regulations like GDPR and HIPAA. Coupled with multi-cloud environments and hybrid operations, this creates a complex compliance and security challenge that requires robust governance frameworks and continuous vigilance.
Thalaron Global: Architecting the Future-Ready GCCAt Thalaron Global, we view GCCs not just as cost centers but as strategic assets that can drive innovation, capability development, and competitive differentiation for the enterprise. Our role is to architect, scale, and evolve GCCs into engines of transformation.
Our model is end-to-end, spanning the full lifecycle of GCC evolution:
- Strategic Advisory & Market Entry: We guide clients through market research, location analysis, entity structuring, and regulatory readiness—setting the foundation for success.
- Talent & Capability Build-Out: Leveraging our deep network and market insights, we design talent strategies that attract, on-board, and retain top talent—including leadership and niche skill roles—while aligning to global culture.
- Operational Excellence: We establish robust HR, finance, legal, and vendor governance frameworks that enable GCCs to focus on strategic work rather than administrative overhead.
- Innovation Enablement: From building Centers of Excellence to launching innovation labs and product engineering initiatives, we help GCCs unlock their potential as value creators.
- Transition & Scalability: Our approach ensures knowledge transfer, operational maturity, and the ability for GCCs to independently scale over time—delivering lasting capability, not just short-term fixes. One such engagement was with a leading US-based cybersecurity company seeking to establish a Global Capability Center (GCC) and Innovation Hub in India to accelerate product innovation, build a scalable and cost-efficient engineering base, and ensure governance and cultural alignment from day one. Thalaron Global designed and executed an end-to-end solution—developing the GCC strategy and blueprint, hiring 200+ engineers and cybersecurity professionals over two years, and setting up complete HR, finance, compliance, and IT infrastructure operations. With 0% attrition among the first 50 hires and overall attrition under 8%, we enabled faster product release cycles, delivered ~55% cost savings versus US scaling, and ensured 99.9% operational uptime—resulting in a world-class, future-ready GCC.
Let’s Build Your GCC for the Future
If you are looking to set up, scale, or transform your GCC into a strategic powerhouse, Thalaron Global can help you get there faster, with lower risk and higher impact. Book a complimentary GCC Consultation with our experts and explore how we can help you design, build, and scale a future-ready center of excellence.
