GCCs in India account for 22.5% of AI talent pool: ANSR study
The report by ANSR said GCCs in India are making the shift towards becoming the centres that is driving AI innovation with cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad emerging as key centres for this talent pool.
The global capability centres (GCCs) in India account for 22.5% of total artificial intelligence (AI) talent demand in the country, and this has also led to the expansion of hiring professionals with skills associated with this tech platform, according to a study.
The study titled: AI Talent Trends in India’s GCCs – Report 2025 by ANSR, a GCC consultancy firm in partnership Wizmatic said for every core AI role, GCCs deploy an additional 5–6 adjacently-skilled professionals in software engineering, data pipelines, and platform engineering to support AI deployment and scaling.
According to the study, Fortune 500 GCCs in India now employ over 126,600 professionals in AI-aligned roles. Of these, 18,300+ constitute core AI experts working in machine learning, deep learning, LLM engineering, MLOps, and GenAI platform development. This shows the shift among GCCs from execution centres to AI innovation command hubs.
Today, the AI talent pool in the country has grown by 252% between 2016 and 2024 is 2.51X higher than the global average, the study said and noted that India has also reversed the decade-long brain drain trend, retaining more senior AI talent domestically due to high-impact GCC roles, competitive compensation, and access to global-scale AI problem statements.
The city of Bengaluru leads with 30% of India’s total AI workforce, and Hyderabad has seen a sharp rise in AI CoEs anchored by cloud majors (AWS, Microsoft, Google) and deep-tech GCCs. Chennai and Pune continue to strengthen domain-led AI capabilities across BFSI, industrial, and healthcare.
On the report, ANSR Co-founder Vikram Ahuja said, “The next decade will belong to organisations that invest in people, cultivate new AI-native capabilities, and steer this transformation responsibly. The GCCs that keep business impact at the core, while using AI as the force multiplier for innovation and value creation, will define the future of global enterprise.”
The report projects that GCCs will accelerate India’s transition from a global talent supplier to a strategic AI innovation hub, with nearly all mature GCCs expected to operate specialised teams in areas like agentic AI, multi-modal model development, LLM governance, and AI-first product platforms by 2030.
Edited by Jyoti Narayan