If you're reading this, you've probably already decided India makes sense. That part's easy: everyone knows the talent pool, the cost math, and the time zone overlap. What trips companies up isn't the "why," it's the "how." Which city, which leaders to hire first, how fast to scale, and how not to end up with a glorified back office five years in.
This guide walks through the process the way we've seen it actually play out, not the sanitized version, the real one.
First, What Even Is a GCC?
A Global Capability Center is a wholly-owned operation a company sets up in another country to run strategic parts of the business, not outsource them, own them.
That's the line that matters. An outsourcing vendor does what you tell it. A GCC becomes part of you: your engineering team, your product roadmap, your IP, your culture, just sitting in Bengaluru or Pune instead of Austin or London.
Well-run GCCs today handle:
- Product and software engineering
- AI/ML and data science
- Cloud, DevOps, and platform engineering
- Cybersecurity
- Finance, R&D, and enterprise operations
Why India, Why Now
You don't need convincing on the talent numbers they're everywhere. What's worth pausing on is how the role of an India GCC has shifted. A decade ago, "India center" meant support functions and cost savings. Today, the companies getting real value are the ones asking their India team to build ship products, own architecture decisions, run AI initiatives not just execute tickets from headquarters.
That shift changes everything downstream: who you hire, how you position the center to candidates, even which city you pick.
A few reasons this still holds up in 2026:
The talent is there, but it's not free for the taking: Engineers, AI specialists, cloud architects India has depth most markets can't match. But the good ones have options. A generic job posting won't get you the top 20%.
You can start small and grow into it: Nobody needs to hire 100 people on day one. A five-person engineering pod can become a 200-person center of excellence, on your timeline.
Done right, it becomes a genuine capability, not a cost center: The GCCs that earn continued investment are the ones leadership can point to and say "that team shipped X" not just "we saved Y%." Start with outcomes, not headcount targets. Everything else follows from there.
The Actual Setup Process
Nail Down Why You're Doing This
Before you look at a single city or resume, answer this honestly: what problem is the GCC solving?
Is it engineering capacity? A dedicated AI team? Cybersecurity coverage that's hard to staff at home? Different answers point to different playbooks. A SaaS company building product engineering in India needs a very different setup than an enterprise standing up a cybersecurity or data function.
Write down what the center needs to deliver in year one, and what it should look like in year three. That document becomes your north star for every decision after this.
Decide How It'll Actually Run
Once you know the "why," figure out the "how." Will India own the roadmap for certain products, or execute against a plan set at HQ? Who signs off on hiring? Who owns the budget?
This sounds like paperwork, but skip it and you'll spend year one untangling confusion instead of shipping. Get clear, early, on decision rights between your India leadership and global leadership.
Pick a City Based on Talent, Not Trend
Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai — every one of them has a case. The mistake is picking the "obvious" hub without checking whether it fits your hiring needs.
Look at:
- Who's actually available: does the city have the specific skills you're hiring for, not just tech talent in general
- What you'll pay: compensation varies meaningfully city to city
- Who else is hiring there: a deep talent pool with 40 competing GCCs means a harder, pricier search
- Whether it can support you at scale: a city that works for 40 people might strain at 400
This is exactly the kind of decision that benefits from outside data rather than a gut call location advisory and compensation benchmarking exist for a reason.
Get the Legal and Compliance Groundwork Right
Entity structure, tax and transfer pricing, employment law, data protection, IP protection none of this is optional, and none of it should be improvised. Bring in qualified legal and tax counsel early; requirements shift depending on your home jurisdiction and what the center will actually do. Getting this foundation right before you start hiring at volume fixing it retroactively is far more painful.
Hire Leadership Before You Hire Anyone Else
Here's the mistake we see most often: companies treat leadership hiring as something to figure out "once the team's bigger." It's backwards. Your first leaders shape everything about the culture, who wants to work there, how fast you can hire well.
Depending on scope, your founding bench might include a GCC Head, an Engineering Leader, a Product Leader, and someone owning HR/Talent. Get these people in place before the broader hiring push, not during it.
Build a Hiring Roadmap Around Capability, Not a Number
"Hire 100 people" isn't a plan. Instead, map out what capabilities you need and when:
Phase 1: GCC Head, Engineering Leader, senior engineers, a Product Manager, HR leadership
Phase 2: Software engineers, QA, DevOps, product designers, data engineers
Phase 3: AI/ML engineers, cloud architects, security specialists, data scientists, engineering managers
Headcount should follow what the business needs, not the other way around.
Give Candidates a Reason That Isn't Just Salary
Your brand might be a household name in the US and completely unknown to a senior engineer in Pune. That's fine but it means you need to sell the work, not just the paycheck.
Talk about what they'll actually build, the tech stack, the ownership they'll have, the path to leadership. Strong candidates in India, like everywhere else, are chasing interesting problems and real growth, not just a bump in comp.
Go After Specialist Talent Deliberately
This is where GCCs either become genuinely valuable or quietly stall out. Roles in AI/ML, cloud, cybersecurity, and platform engineering are competitive everywhere, India included. Generic recruiting won't cut it here you need compensation benchmarking, targeted sourcing, and access to talent networks built specifically around these skill sets.
Consider a Dedicated Team to Bridge the Gap
You don't have to wait months for every permanent hire to close before you start delivering. A dedicated team, say, five engineers, two QA, a DevOps hire, and a PM can get you shipping while your permanent org takes shape in parallel. If speed to market matters, this is often the smarter path early on.
Wire Up the Infrastructure
Dev environments, cloud access, identity and access management, security controls, project tooling get this in place before the team starts, not after. The goal is a center that feels fully plugged into the global org from day one, not a satellite office working off a delay.
Launch, Then Actually Measure Something
Track time to hire, time to productivity, retention, delivery velocity, and cost per hire not just "how many people did we hire this quarter." Early, visible wins are what get you the budget for phase two.
Scale With Intention
Once the first team's delivering, expand deliberately into AI, data, cloud, cybersecurity, product whatever the business needs next. Some companies eventually add a second city. Either way, scale based on what's working, not on momentum alone.
Mistakes We See Companies Make (So You Don't Have To)
- Leading with a headcount target instead of a strategy: "200 people by year two" tells you nothing about what they'll build.
- Hiring leadership last instead of first: By the time you notice the gap, culture and hiring quality have already suffered.
- Picking a city purely on cost: Cheaper salaries don't help if attrition eats the savings.
- Treating the center as an outsourcing shop: If India never gets ownership, it never becomes a real capability.
- Hiring too fast, too loosely. Speed without a real assessment process just means fixing quality problems later.
- Deprioritizing specialist roles. AI, cloud, and security talent is hard to find a plan for from day one, not as an afterthought.
Build It Yourself, Bring in a Partner, or Both?
You've basically got three paths:
- Fully in-house: total control, but it takes real internal bandwidth and time to get right.
- Partner-led: a specialist handles workforce strategy, leadership search, and team-building, so you're not learning the India market from scratch.
- Hybrid: you keep strategic control, a partner handles execution on hiring and workforce planning. For most companies moving at any real speed, this is the path that gets you from zero to a functioning team the fastest.
Where SquadXP Fits In
Building a GCC is a lot more than posting jobs. It's workforce planning, location strategy, leadership search, specialist recruiting, and a plan for scaling that doesn't fall apart at 150 people.
That's the whole reason SquadXP's GCC Building service exists covering strategy and location advisory, founding and engineering leadership hires, specialist technology talent across AI/ML, cloud, DevOps, and cybersecurity, and the workforce intelligence to keep scaling smart as you grow.
If you need to move faster than a full permanent build-out allows, a dedicated team can get you delivering while your long-term center takes shape. And if it's specific leadership or specialist roles you're stuck on, specialist hiring is built exactly for that.
Don't start with "how many people do we hire." Start with what the center needs to accomplish, what capabilities it should own, and who you need to get there. The location, the leadership, the hiring roadmap all of it follows from that one decision.
Thinking about building your India GCC? Talk to a GCC expert and get a straight read on what it'll take to launch and what it'll cost to get it wrong.
