Kamal Ghorui
When policy evolves from being an enabling backdrop to an active catalyst in a sector’s journey, the resulting momentum can provide quantum growth opportunities. Driven by a clear triple-engine policy thrust: the India-EU Free Trade Agreement and the US-India Interim Trade Framework, and the Union Budget, India’s GCC story seems to have entered an elevated phase, structurally. The impact will not merely be in the imminent increase in jobs in India, but also in GCCs’ positioning as strategic accelerators of global transformation.
The India – EU FTA in January marks one of the most important services-sector breakthroughs in over two decades. The agreement secures predictable access for Indian firms across 144 services subsectors in the EU region, spanning IT, Research & Development, professional services and tech-enabled healthcare. It also clarifies rules on e-commerce, software protection and cross-border data flows. In addition, a structured mobility framework for intra-corporate transferees, contractual service suppliers and independent professionals finally enables the deployment of Indian talent across Europe in a timely, predictable manner. For product, analytics and engineering focused GCCs, this is a strong operational lever, enabling India-based teams to plug directly into European innovation cycles.
If Europe brings clarity, the United States brings stability. The US – India Interim Trade Framework announced on February 6 signals a reset in India-US ties and enhances cooperation on critical technology inputs – most importantly GPUs and data-center equipment, the backbone of modern AI infrastructure.
Restoring predictability in the US – India corridor, one that underpins the majority of enterprise tech and health-tech flows gives GCCs the confidence to expand cloud footprints, modernize platforms and accelerate AI programs without treating policy as a risk variable.
But it is the Union Budget 2026 that delivers the clearest structural signal. By offering a tax holiday till 2047 for foreign cloud providers hosting global workloads on India-based data centers and introducing a 15% safe harbor for related-party data-center services, the government has effectively elevated compute to national infrastructure status. Analysts estimate that such clarity could unlock $70–100 billion of investment in AI and cloud capacity over the coming decade.
Further, a unified 15.5% safe-harbor regime for IT/ITeS services and a fast-track two-year window for unilateral APAs, neutralize transfer-pricing uncertainty, and free up capital and leadership attention for capability building.
All of this unfolds against the backdrop of a GCC ecosystem already operating at formidable scale. India hosts 1,700+ GCCs employing nearly 1.9 million professionals, with nearly 70% of new Asia GCCs choosing India for its depth of tech talent, ecosystem maturity and product-engineering capabilities. In healthcare, technology and operations arms like Optum have publicly articulated a shift from cost-arbitrage centers to “front-to-back innovation partners,” integrating engineering, analytics and clinical-adjacent capabilities to co-create global platforms.
For GCCs, this is the closest India has come to offering a long-term policy backbone one that supports scale, rewards innovation and recognizes that global competitiveness is now measured in capability rather than cost. The cumulative effect will become more visible soon. Ownership of platforms, global risk engines, regulatory technology, industry data models and product architecture – all core value-creation roles could move to India. As a result, compensation, skill intensity and managerial responsibility will also rise, creating a wider ecosystem impact. Demand will grow for cloud architects, product strategists, sector specialists, design researchers and legal technologists. And, capabilities built for multinational clients will increasingly influence India’s own financial, healthcare and manufacturing systems.
While data governance alignment and mobility implementation remain important, the direction is clear. GCCs are moving from a cost narrative to a capability narrative. India is now competing on expertise, policy predictability and infrastructure depth, leading to better jobs, stronger exports and a more robust innovation ecosystem.
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