- India hosts approximately 2,117 GCCs operating across 3,728 units and supporting 2.36m professionals.
- Global demand for colocation data centres is projected to nearly triple — from approximately 82 GW in 2025 to around 220 GW by 2030.
India’s technology services sector is entering a transformative phase, with artificial intelligence emerging as the single most powerful catalyst for growth across cloud infrastructure, enterprise modernisation, and the rapidly expanding Global Capability Centre (GCC) ecosystem. According to a comprehensive report by Equirus Securities, end-user spending on public cloud services in India is projected to surge 28.1 per cent year-on-year to reach $17.5 billion in 2026, up from $13.7 billion in 2025.
The acceleration reflects a structural shift in how Indian enterprises are approaching digital transformation, with AI workloads becoming the primary driver of cloud adoption.
The AI boom is catalysing a historic expansion of data centre infrastructure worldwide. Equirus notes that global demand for colocation data centres is projected to nearly triple — from approximately 82 GW in 2025 to around 220 GW by 2030.
What makes this trajectory particularly significant is the composition of that demand: AI workloads are expected to account for roughly 70 per cent of total data centre capacity requirements by the end of the decade. This aligns with broader industry analysis suggesting that more than half of all data centre capacity will be dedicated to AI workloads by the early 2030s.
In this environment, Equirus identifies three decisive competitive differentiators: access to reliable power, availability of advanced semiconductor chips, and speed of project execution. The report underscores that organisations capable of securing these resources early will be best positioned to capture value as AI adoption scales from experimentation to production.
India: A maturing market
The $17.5 billion public cloud spending forecast for India in 2026 signals a maturing market that is moving decisively beyond basic migration toward cloud-native and AI-intensive workloads. Equirus highlights that Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) will lead this growth, as organisations expand their cloud footprint to support enterprise modernization, data engineering pipelines, and large-scale AI model training and inference.
This trajectory is consistent with broader market expectations, with the overall Indian public cloud services market projected to reach $30.4 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 22.6 per cent.
Equirus attributes the momentum to three primary drivers: AI-ready infrastructure investments, platform modernisation initiatives, and the transition of AI deployments from pilot phases to full-scale production environments.
The report notes that AI is fundamentally reshaping how companies allocate their technology budgets, compelling a reallocation toward cloud resources that can handle compute-intensive workloads.
The GCC revolution
Perhaps the most structurally significant trend highlighted by Equirus is the evolution of India’s GCC landscape. Once the preserve of large multinational corporations seeking cost arbitrage, GCCs are now being actively championed by private equity firms, which are increasingly encouraging their portfolio companies to establish captive centres in India.
This is fundamentally broadening the GCC ecosystem beyond Fortune 500 enterprises and into the mid-market.
As of March 2026, India hosts approximately 2,117 GCCs operating across 3,728 units and supporting 2.36 million professionals, with sector revenue projected at $98.4 billion. More than 110 new GCCs were established in India in 2025 alone, reflecting sustained momentum. Critically, around 80 per cent of new GCCs are prioritising AI and machine learning capabilities, with India leading in AI skill penetration among major GCC markets.
These captive centres are no longer back-office operations. They are being purpose-built as capability hubs for AI, engineering, product development, finance, and analytics — designed to enhance operational efficiency while accelerating value creation for their parent organisations. The market for PE-driven GCCs is projected to expand from $4.5 billion to $6.9 billion, growing at 11.2 per cent compared with 6.5 per cent for the broader GCC market.
India’s structural advantages
The report identifies several structural factors underpinning this trend. India’s vast and increasingly sophisticated talent pool, sustained cost competitiveness relative to other markets, and deep digital capabilities make it the destination of choice for GCC establishment and expansion.
The country’s AI-skilled workforce is among the largest globally, and its technology services providers bring decades of enterprise expertise in areas such as application modernisation, data engineering, and systems integration.
Equirus notes that PE-backed and mid-sized companies are emerging as key contributors to India’s expanding GCC ecosystem — a development that diversifies the sector beyond its traditional reliance on large-cap multinationals and creates a more resilient, innovation-driven landscape.
India’s AI services market is already generating significant traction. Equirus estimates that the sector currently produces $10–12 billion in revenue, with approximately 25 per cent of enterprises now moving their AI initiatives from pilot projects to full production deployments. This transition from experimentation to operationalisation is a critical inflection point — it signals that enterprises are seeing tangible returns and are prepared to commit larger budgets to scaling AI capabilities.
The Indian AI market more broadly is expected to reach $12.02 billion by 2026, growing at a substantial CAGR through the end of the decade. This growth is being fuelled by demand across multiple service lines, including AI governance frameworks, intelligent operations, predictive analytics, and generative AI application development.