Playing to Win – Altre Digital at the ET Edge GCC Summit 2025

 By Rohan Bhattacharyya, Marketing Manager – Altre Digital

What does it really take to set up and scale a global capability center in India?

The answer isn’t as simple as choosing a city or locking in a competitive lease. For most global capability centres in India, success depends on how quickly a business can respond to market conditions, and whether it has the right insights at the right time.

That was the message we carried to the 7th Edition of the ET Edge Global Capability Centres Summit 2025 in Bengaluru. The event brought together top operators, GCC companies, policy influencers, and growth leaders to discuss where the market is heading and how businesses can lead it.

At Altre Digital, our view is clear: if your real estate strategy is static, your growth can’t be dynamic. In the current landscape, real estate is a lever. And the companies winning today are those who treat it like one.

A Strategy That Evolves With the Market

Our Founder and CEO, Shweta Sawhney, opened her keynote with a straightforward question — how many organizations didn’t have data which was accurate, timely, and updated. 

Her talk, focused on data-driven decision-making, reflected the growing need for better GCC resources and insights at the strategy level. Many global businesses entering India or scaling here are forced to operate with outdated or fragmented information. That leads to delays, budget overruns, and often, missed opportunities.

We shared findings from our recent survey, conducted across 52 GCC clients and strategy heads. Only 11.54 percent of respondents had managed to set up in under three months. Half reported major challenges around location selection and access to talent. As Shweta pointed out, it was a pattern across organizations not a one-off. 

What GCC leaders need today is clarity, not just in real estate pricing or talent costs, but in understanding the broader GCC model. From city-wise growth hotspots to infrastructure maturity, and long-term viability.

This is exactly where platforms like ours are making a difference. Instead of piecemeal data, we offer a centralized view tailored for global capability centers and their unique needs.

What the Data Showed

Here are some highlights from our research that were shared during the session:

• Just 11.54% of GCCs manage setup in under three months

• 50% struggle with talent sourcing and location planning

• Office rents in major Indian cities have risen 25% over two years

• India is projected to host 2,400 GCC companies by 2030

• The average number of employees per GCC is expected to more than double in the same timeframe
  
  

This projected growth is exciting, but it also comes with pressure. The available workforce won’t automatically expand at the same rate. And neither would real estate supply. GCC setup and strategy can no longer rely on historical models or instinct-led decision-making.

Businesses need to evolve from viewing real estate as a support function to seeing it as a core pillar of the global capability center strategy.

Inside the Altre Booth

Our presence at the summit wasn’t limited to the stage. The Altre booth was active throughout the day, drawing attention from GCC leaders, founders, and key decision makers.

We spoke at length about shifts in the GCC landscape, including how shared service centers are transitioning into centres of excellence, and how cities like Pune and Chennai are now outperforming larger markets in terms of talent-to-cost ratios.

More importantly, we demonstrated how access to real-time GCC insights, layered with micro-market intelligence, is now becoming a competitive advantage. All done through the use of our Business Location Advisory Tool. 

Our approach blends location analytics, talent heatmaps, and cost modelling into one integrated dashboard. Whether your company is pursuing a build-operate-transfer model or testing a captive unit for the first time, the ability to act with accurate data is the difference between progress and paralysis.

The MedExpert Case Study

To ground these conversations in outcomes, we shared a recent success story: MedExpert Billing Solutions. The company came to us with a clear objective — launch a 50-seat GCC with flexibility to scale.

What followed was a clean, data-led rollout. Using our platform, MedExpert was able to identify Chennai’s Mount Poonamallee Road as the ideal micro-market. They secured a managed office, avoided upfront capex, and had access to the right infrastructure and workforce density.

They grew to 1,200 seats within a year. No missed timelines. No overspend. This is what happens when GCC setup and strategy is aligned with real-time intelligence rather than assumptions.

Key Trends and Learnings

Throughout the event, a few themes stood out. These reflect not only where the industry is today, but where it's headed:

• Bangalore continues to dominate, but secondary cities are growing at a faster clip

• GCC companies in India are evolving into centres of excellence, with greater autonomy and accountability

• Cost savings alone aren’t enough anymore. Adaptability, execution speed, and access to talent are the new markers of success

• As more players enter the market, the fight for high-quality talent will intensify
  
  

For many attendees, this underscored the need for sharper, more agile decision frameworks. The build-operate-transfer model, for instance, may offer flexibility but only if supported by granular, reliable data.

Where It’s All Going

At Altre Digital, we’ve always believed that a global capability center is more than a physical space. It’s an extension of your business philosophy. And if your strategy is built on slow or fragmented data, the entire foundation weakens.

The summit confirmed that the old ways of GCC planning, scattered listings, agency reports, reactive decisions, are nearing their limit. What’s coming next is a more connected, insight-driven model that treats location, cost, compliance, and talent as one integrated equation.

The companies that succeed in this next phase will be those who build with awareness, not assumptions.

If you're in the process of setting up or scaling your global capability centre in India, and want to explore a more efficient path forward, reach out to us. We’ll help you move faster and smarter.