GCCs and Data Centres Are Redrawing Indian Real Estate Map

Global Capability Centres now account for more than 40% of total gross office leasing across India’s top seven cities. In 2025 alone, GCCs leased over 32.5mn sq ft out of total gross leasing of 80.5mn sq fti, the highest annual GCC absorption ever recorded. This is not a demand-side anomaly. GCCs have fundamentally altered the profile of the Indian office occupier: longer lease tenures, higher seat densities, superior fit-out standards, and a preference for campus-scale developments that integrated tech parks, not legacy CBDs, are best positioned to deliver.

Bengaluru commands the largest GCC footprint, hosting over 875 centres, nearly 29% of India’s national total, and capturing more than one-third of all GCC leasing in 2025ii. But the more consequential story is what is happening at the margins. Pune, Delhi-NCR, and Hyderabad each account for 14–15% of GCC leasing and are gaining ground. More significantly, cities like Jaipur, Kochi, Indore, Surat, and Coimbatore are moving from fringe mentions to active pipelines, as GCCs follow talent and talent is no longer exclusively metropolitan. By 2030, India is expected to host more than 2,400 GCCs employing nearly 2.8mn professionalsiii. Developers who anchor their land acquisition strategies to historical absorption maps will find themselves consistently behind the curve.

The second force reshaping the map is less visible in conventional leasing data but arguably more consequential over the next decade: data centres. India’s installed capacity has grown from approximately 375 MW in 2020 to around 1,500 MW by 2025iv. The sector, valued at $10 billion today, is projected to more than double to $22 billion by 2030, with capacity potentially scaling to 4–5 GW in base-case scenariosv. Announced investment commitments over the next five years stand at $60–70 billion, driven by hyperscalers and sovereign capital. Mumbai leads with 49% of operational capacity, Chennai follows at 18%, and the NCR at 11%vi. But power infrastructure constraints and land costs are already pushing feasibility analyses toward secondary markets, with Hyderabad positioned to add 1,000–1,200 MW through 2030.

Here is the insight most market commentary misses: data centres are not a niche industrial asset. They are the anchor infrastructure for the broader digital economy, and their location decisions create downstream real estate demand across hospitality, residential, and logistics segments. A hyperscale campus does not arrive alone. It arrives with engineering talent, vendor ecosystems, and institutional capital that reprices surrounding land. Developers and investors treating data centres as an isolated play are systematically undervaluing the multiplier.

India’s data centre market is projected to more than double to $22 billion by 2030, with $60–70 billion in investment commitments already announced. Every hyperscale campus reprices the land around itvii.

The convergence of GCCs and data centres is also reshaping infrastructure priorities. Power reliability, fibre density, and water availability, not proximity to airports or traditional commercial districts, are increasingly the variables that determine site viability. This represents a genuine inversion of how Indian real estate feasibility has historically been assessed.

What should the industry take from this? The cities that will matter most over the next ten years are not necessarily the ones that matter most today. The investors and developers who move early into emerging corridors, with the right infrastructure thesis, will define the next generation of prime commercial real estate, not inherit it. The map is being redrawn. The question is whether you are drawing it or reading someone else’s rendition.

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