Mumbai, Oct. 27 -- GCCs are increasingly being built around product development, engineering, R&D, platforms and AI to expand their footprint, even as the work, teams and operating models that will occupy that footprint continue to evolve, write Nitika Goel and Saurabh Mehta.
India's global capability centres (GCCs) are taking more office space than ever before. In the first quarter of FY2026-27, they absorbed a record 9.1 million sq. ft., accounting for 44 per cent of India's 20.7 million sq. ft. of office leasing during the quarter. At the same time, what happens inside these workplaces is changing. The GCCs are increasingly being built around product development, engineering, R&D, platforms and AI. In fact, 96 per cent of centres established since FY2021-22 launched with a product, R&D or engineering mandate. The two shifts are happening together: GCCs are expanding their physical footprint even as the work, teams and operating models that will occupy that footprint continue to evolve. The question, then, is what kind of mandate are GCCs actually building the workplace for?
Work outpaces workplace Consider an engineering GCC. It may begin with a clearly defined mandate around building and maintaining part of a global product. Over time, that team may take on architecture, end-to-end product ownership or advanced R&D. An AI capability may be added. Senior technical roles may grow. Collaboration with business and product teams may deepen. The centre may eventually establish teams in another city. The headcount has changed, but that is not the only part of the story. The work itself has changed shape. An engineer may move between concentrated development work, architecture reviews, experimentation and product discussions within the same day. Senior architects may spend less time at a fixed workstation and more time in design reviews, mentoring and technical problem-solving. AI teams may need collaborative environments alongside controlled infrastructure for sensitive data and models. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) accelerate this shift. As routine execution is increasingly augmented or automated, the value of the worker moves towards judgement, experimentation, problem-solving and collaboration. A workplace designed around individual execution therefore has to support a very different pattern of work. This becomes more important as AI moves deeper into GCC operations. More than 1,200 GCCs in India now have AI and ML capabilities, and generative and agentic AI are accounting for a growing share of enterprise use cases. The implication is not simply that offices need fewer desks or more collaboration rooms. It is that headcount alone is no longer enough for workplace planning.
Real estate lag This is where the mismatch becomes visible. Real estate decisions are typically long-cycle decisions. GCC mandates increasingly are not. An engineering centre can move from execution to product ownership, establish an AI team, change its talent mix or enter another location while the workplace planned for its original mandate is still being executed. The problem is not that enterprises have stopped forecasting. It is that the range of possible outcomes has widened. That means workplace planning has to distinguish between parts of the organisation where the mandate is already stable and those where it is still evolving. A mature engineering operation with a well-established mandate may justify a conventional long-term lease or dedicated campus. The enterprise knows the work, talent requirements, and likely scale with reasonable confidence. But the same organisation may also be building a new AI capability, entering another city or taking on a product mandate whose eventual size and operating model are not yet clear. Making the same real estate commitment in both cases assumes a level of certainty that the business itself does not have. The workplace model should reflect that difference. This approach is already being used by GCCs as they expand into engineering, analytics and product development. A fully managed workspace can allow a centre to add capacity quickly without the upfront infrastructure burden of a conventional build-out, while preserving flexibility as the mandate and scale of operations evolve. The significance is not that managed space is inherently better. It is that the workplace commitment was aligned to the immediate requirement for scale and speed. Flexibility does not have to mean compromising on enterprise requirements. And permanence does not necessarily mean better alignment with the business. The right model depends on what the work requires and how much certainty the organisation has about what comes next. Align workplace to certainty That leads to a different way of planning GCC workplaces. Instead of starting with 'How many seats do we need?' leaders can begin by asking which parts of the organisation are stable, which are scaling, and which are still taking shape. Stable mandates may justify permanent workplaces where the enterprise retains a high degree of control over technology, security, employee experience and brand. Scaling mandates may need room to grow before their final size is fully visible. Managed environments can allow those teams to expand without repeatedly redesigning the core workplace. Emerging mandates-new AI teams, new-city entries, or capabilities whose operating model is still being defined-may benefit most from optionality while the organisation learns what the eventual requirement will be. The same GCC can use all three approaches simultaneously. A mature engineering operation may sit in a long-term workplace, while a rapidly scaling product team uses managed space and a new AI capability or new-city operation starts with a more flexible model before making a larger commitment. As the mandate becomes clearer, the workplace strategy can change with it. That is a more useful way to think about flexibility. It is not about taking less space. It is about avoiding permanent decisions where the underlying business decision is not yet permanent. The market is already moving in this direction. GCCs accounted for roughly 40-45 per cent of enterprise flex-seat uptake in 2025, compared with 37-39 per cent in 2022. This is not evidence that flexible workspace will replace conventional real estate. It suggests that enterprises are becoming more deliberate about where each model fits. For developers and workspace providers, this changes the definition of GCC-ready infrastructure as well. Location, building quality and floorplate will remain important. But GCCs increasingly also need enterprise technology and security, customised environments, faster occupancy and the ability to expand without rebuilding the workplace every time the mandate changes. As Sumit Lakhani, CEO of Awfis-India's largest flexible workspace provider-puts it, "The workplace requirements of GCCs have evolved significantly over the past few years. Today's GCCs are looking for more than real estate; they need scalable, technology-enabled environments that can adapt to changing business needs while maintaining enterprise-grade standards." The real estate decisions GCCs make today will outlast many of the assumptions on which they are being made. The challenge is therefore not predicting exactly what the GCC will look like five or ten years from now. It is ensuring that the workplace chosen today does not limit what the GCC can become tomorrow.
About the author: Nitika Goel, Managing Partner & Chief Marketing Officer, Zinnov, where she advises global enterprises on growth strategy, GCCs, market expansion, AI-led transformation, and ecosystem development. Saurabh Mehta, Head of Corporate Services GCC, Zinnov, is a seasoned leader with over 20 years' expertise in GCC operations, advising global enterprises on setup and transformation across real estate, IT infrastructure, cybersecurity, facilities and administration.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Infrastructure Today.