GCCs offering up to 20% higher salaries than IT services: Report

Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India are offering up to 20 per cent higher salaries as compared with the IT services, especially at entry and mid levels, a report said on Tuesday.

According to the report by TeamLease Digital, India has over 1,600 GCCs employing over 1.66 million professionals. It is poised to welcome 800 new GCCs in the next 5-6 years, which shows the country's growing prominence as a global tech hub.

GCCs are centralised units established by multinational companies to manage specific business functions or processes, leveraging cost advantages, a skilled workforce, and favourable business environments in strategic locations worldwide. GCCs play a vital role in driving efficiency and innovation across sectors such as IT, finance, and research and development.

On the other hand, IT products & services encompass development, production, and management of hardware, software, networks, and services that enable organisations in the creation, management and optimisation of or access to information and business processes.

"GCCs are rapidly surpassing the IT sector in the talent market, especially at entry and mid levels. They offer salaries that are, on an average, 12-20 per cent higher than those in IT services and non-tech industries," TeamLease Digital CEO Neeti Sharma said quoting the report.

This wage premium underscores the growing influence of GCCs as they attract top talent from the IT sector to fuel their expansion, signalling a shift in market dynamics where GCCs are emerging as the dominant force, she added.

The 'Digital Skills and Salary Primer for FY25' report is based on an analysis of 15,000 job roles from the 3 sectors, including GCCs, IT services and non-tech sectors.

Currently, in GCCs, there are more opportunities for people with 0-10 years experience. The senior level has a wider salary gap for many of the functional areas, and the premium for niche skills is also higher.

The report further showed that there is a growing trend of setting up GCCs in tier-II cities like Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Vadodara, which indicates a geographical diversification of tech opportunities across the country.

Skills that are seeing an increasing demand in GCCs are PyTorch, AWS, DevOps, NLP, Kubernetes, Hyperledger Fabric, Blockchain, Tableau, SQL, and ServiceNow, the report added.

In GCCs, the percentage of women tech professionals is expected to increase to 35 per cent from the current 25 per cent by 2027.

However, the report also revealed that there is a persistent gender pay gap in the tech industry, ranging from 10-17 per cent on an average and sometimes reaching 22-30 per cent for roles like Data Analysis, it added.

Further, the report found that in the IT products and services sector, cloud investment is set to grow by 25-30 per cent in the next 5 years.

IT products and services are expected to account for 8 per cent of India's GDP by 2026 and create 14 million jobs by adopting cloud solutions, underlining the sector's potential for economic impact, the report said.

Meanwhile, the traditionally non-tech industries are also being transformed through the use of advanced technologies with over 70 per cent of the companies in telecom, media and entertainment, BFSI, and energy and utilities sectors, dedicating more than 20 per cent of their technology budgets to digital advancements.

The tech talent pool in this non-tech sector is also expected to expand annually at 7.86 per cent, reaching 11.15 lakh by FY27 from 7.65 lakh in FY22, highlighting the increasing integration of technology across various traditional industries, the report added.