New Delhi: India has become a leading source of AI talent, currently housing 32 per cent of the global GCC talent pool, 28 per cent of the world’s STEM workforce, and 23 per cent of global software engineering talent, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday.
Addressing the Special Ministerial Plenary and Report Back session at the inaugural ‘CII GCC Business Summit 2025’ here, Sitharaman said “We have among the highest penetration of AI skills globally”.
In the last decade, 7 new IITs & 16 new IIITs have been opened across the country. India has among the highest proportion of female STEM graduates, at 42.7 per cent. It is important because there is approximately 35 per cent female participation in GCC workforce,” she told the gathering.
She noted that India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are at a critical inflection point, evolving from back-office hubs to strategic centres of innovation and leadership.
Since 1985, it took over 30 years to reach 1,000 GCCs, but in just the last decade, an additional 800 have been established. Today, India is home to 1,800 GCCs employing 2.16 million professionals, contributing $68 billion to GDP with the potential to touch $150–200 billion by 2030.
Over 50 per cent of Fortune 500 companies now have a presence in India, drawn by the country’s deep talent pool, competitive costs, and ecosystem maturity.
This rise, she emphasised, has been underpinned by India’s emergence as a global talent engine.
Over 1.6 crore youth have also been trained under the PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana. “Our vision is clear: we are not just preparing for the future; we are building it,” FM Sitharaman stressed.
The Finance Minister emphasised how the government has been working on reducing approval timelines, enhancing tax certainty including on Advance Pricing Agreements (APAs), and integrating administrative support across ministries.
All these, she reiterated, extend to GCCs as well. Notably, she encouraged greater investment in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and showcased models like GIFT City as examples of regulatory facilitation. “India must not lose this opportunity,” she concluded, pledging full government support in powering the GCC growth story.
Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII, acknowledged the government’s leadership in positioning GCCs as a national priority.
He reiterated CII’s commitment to working with the government and industry to ensure that India not only leads the world in GCC scale, but also in value, innovation, and strategic capability.
Earlier in the day, Sunil Barthwal, Secretary, Department of Commerce, said manufacturing comparative advantage is no longer the benchmark for trade among nations.
“With the service sector expanding its niche and GCC’s becoming a hub for providing services to manufacturing companies, FTAs have become a very critical enabler of the GCC ecosystem”, Barthwal highlighted at one of the sessions.
Reiterating the importance of FTAs, Barthwal noted that the “India-UK” FTA has a special chapter on Innovation thereby strengthening innovation corridors between partner countries. He further added that FTAs ensure regulatory practices and institutional mechanisms between two sets of partners which can be harmonised and sustained.
(IANS)
