Indian Real Estate to Hit New Peak with GCCs in 2025

Indian Real Estate to Hit New Peak with GCCs in 2025

It has been nearly 40 years since Texas Instruments established the first global capability centre (GCC) in India in 1985. Today, the country is home to over 1,700 GCCs, which are driving significant demand for real estate across the top six cities. GCCs have become one of the most important forces driving demand for commercial and residential real estate in India, accounting for 40% of overall office leasing from 2016 to 2024, and in turn, spurring demand for housing. This signifies a direct relationship between the rise of GCCs and the growth of the real estate market, highlighting the need for enabling policies by the government and investments by the ecosystem, including developers and institutional investors.

According to reports, leasing activity in the top seven cities skyrocketed to unprecedented levels of 77.2 million square feet in 2024 – a remarkable 22.6% year-on-year (Y-O-Y) increase from 2023’s already historic high of 63 million square feet, with GCCs at the epicentre of this extraordinary boom, leasing 27.7 million square feet in 2024 alone.

The year 2025 is poised to be a defining moment in the history of Global Capability Centres (GCCs), as the Union Budget 2025-26 proposes a National Framework for GCCs in emerging cities. This will help states promote GCCs by improving infrastructure, enhancing talent availability, and fostering industry collaboration, thereby creating immense demand for real estate.
The expansion of the GCC landscape in India has been primarily driven by a large talent pool of highly skilled and cost-effective professionals across various domains, coupled with a robust IT infrastructure. The GCC inflow can be attributed to the above factors, along with India's time zone advantage, which enables seamless collaboration with global markets.

This shift can be felt in the rise of micro-markets across the top six cities, including Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata, with Bengaluru cornering the lion’s share of GCC absorption, capturing 47% of the total GCC leasing nationwide. Varthur, Sarjapur in Bengaluru, Chembur, Borivali, and Panvel in Mumbai, as well as Gurugram CBD and Noida CBD in the Delhi-NCR region, are some of the key micro-markets witnessing the influx of GCCs due to the presence of a robust office infrastructure, widespread development of housing complexes, and a thriving retail ecosystem. This assumes significance as occupiers across the Asia Pacific region are willing to pay up to 20% higher rentals for superior-quality offices in select premium micro-markets, despite a cost-conscious mindset.

The GCC boom in the country has created large-scale employment opportunities and elevated the pay structure for Indian employees, as the war for highly skilled talent allows companies to invest heavily in their acquisition. Industry reports on hiring trends suggest that GCCs are projected to offer salary hikes of 10-20% for top performers compared to traditional Indian IT service companies in FY26, as they are hiring more swiftly, especially in high-demand roles such as AI/ML and cloud. This will propel job creation in the GCC sector to over 1.9 million by 2030, from the current 1.3 million.

This enables employees to invest in upmarket localities and premium housing complexes, given their higher disposable incomes. India's housing market recently hit a new milestone, with luxury apartments priced over INR 1 crore dominating 2024 sales, accounting for 50% of the annual sales for the first time. In addition to this, housing sales across the top cities, including Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, and Mumbai, are expected to touch 3.05 lakh units spread across 485 million square feet.

The rapid proliferation of GCCs in India, which is expected to achieve a total revenue of $64.6 billion by the end of 2024, up 40% from the previous fiscal year, as per NASSCOM, bodes well for the real estate sector. This year, we expect the GCC growth story to catalyse smaller cities while expanding its exposure to CRE segments such as managed workspaces and built-to-suit. With long-term office leases and greater stability in the sector, developers and institutional investors are betting big on real estate investment trends India 2025 and investing significantly in developing new projects across commercial and residential segments, while the growing employee base is in immense demand for quality housing projects.