The GCC Shift: How Global Brands Are Quietly Moving Marketing Intelligence to India

For years, the shorthand for India in global marketing was execution at scale: campaign ops, reporting, content adaptation, maybe a dashboard refreshed overnight. That picture is now outdated. What global companies are building in India today are Global Capability Centres, or GCCs, that sit much closer to the nerve centre of the marketing machine: customer analytics, retail media, attribution, pricing intelligence, content supply chains, AI model operations and the decision engines behind personalisation. India already hosts around 1,700 to 1,800 GCCs employing about 1.9 to 2 million people, and official and industry estimates now put the market on a path to roughly $99 billion to $105 billion by 2030.

In retail and consumer goods, the shift is especially visible. EY says India now hosts more than 70 retail and CPG GCCs employing over 85,000 professionals, with more than 25 new centres likely in the next two to three years. The work is no longer peripheral. These hubs increasingly own mandates across merchandising, sales, marketing, customer service and store operations, while new centres are being launched with data and AI built into the brief from day one.

The Quiet Migration

The past five years tell the story. During the pandemic and its aftermath, brands accelerated digital commerce, first-party data collection and retail media. That created a new demand for teams that could analyse signals continuously and act on them fast. In India, older centres began moving up the value chain. At Lowe’s, the Bengaluru operation that began with back-office support expanded into tech and analytics, then into omnichannel product capabilities and marketing. In 2024, WPP formally made India the headquarters for its scaled global delivery hub. In 2025, McDonald’s opened its Hyderabad global office. In April 2026, Heineken officially opened its Hyderabad business services centre, framing it as part of its global transformation agenda.

The milestones below capture how the change gathered speed, first through capability expansion, then through full-scale intelligence hubs and new GCC launches.

Why the Work is Moving

Cost still matters, but it is no longer the whole story, and in many boardrooms it is no longer even the first one. Lalit Ahuja, founder and chief executive of ANSR, told Reuters that India’s GCC market is moving “beyond information technology and the support functions,” adding: “That opportunity is 10 times the IT opportunity.” Namita Adavi of Zinnov described a “flywheel effect” created by India’s scale and the quality of talent being churned out. The Indian government now says the country contributes 28% of the global STEM workforce and 23% of global software engineering talent, while EY’s 2025 GCC pulse survey found 83% of Indian GCCs are already investing in GenAI, 58% are investing in agentic AI, and 81% are upskilling internal teams on GenAI.

Marketing intelligence is particularly suited to that combination of talent density and enterprise maturity. It sits at the intersection of statistics, consumer insight, AI engineering, product thinking and operational discipline. India increasingly has those skills in one market. In retail and CPG, EY says GCC teams in India are now running market research and analytics, campaign execution, 3D imaging, email campaigns, social media, loyalty marketing, SEO and SEM, while also monitoring sales and customer data in real time so campaigns can be adjusted quickly. This is exactly the kind of mixed creative-analytical work that global brands once guarded near headquarters or major agency hubs.

Time zone logic is also part of the equation. Lowe’s own GCC journey document describes its 2019 to 2020 evolution as a “Follow the Sun” phase, when it expanded into tech and analytics and accelerated digital transformation during the pandemic. Heineken, meanwhile, said the addition of India closes a strategic coverage gap in Asia and supports markets worldwide. In practice, that means marketing ops and intelligence teams in India can work into Europe, overlap with Asia Pacific and hand off to North America, which is ideal for always-on commerce, retail media and campaign measurement.

Regulation is both a driver and a constraint. It is a driver because India’s operating environment is becoming more legible. EY says Budget 2026 and related policy changes brought safer harbour margins of 15.5%, quicker APA timelines and GST clarity around intermediary issues, all of which reduce uncertainty for high-value work. It is a constraint because some data sets remain tightly controlled. India’s DPDP Rules were notified in November 2025 and are being phased in, while the Reserve Bank of India still requires all payment system data to be stored only in India. For marketers handling loyalty, transactions or payments-linked data, that makes architecture, consent and data governance central to the India play.

The Brands that Made it Real

If one company captures the move from support work to marketing intelligence, it is Lowe’s. Its India centre employs more than 4,200 associates across technology, analytics, merchandising, supply chain, marketing and finance, according to Lowe’s own 2024 statement. ANSR’s retail GCC study adds that over the past three to four years, as much as 80% of floor plans and planograms have come to be managed from India, a marketing team of more than 100 people handles content-related work, and Lowe’s Media Network, launched in 2021 and now serving more than 200 clients, was conceptualised and built in India. Chairman and chief executive Marvin Ellison said the India team would continue to play “an important role” in Lowe’s strategy, while Ankur Mittal described the past decade as one of “new possibilities in omnichannel retail.”

At Best Buy, the signal is different but just as telling: this is a newer centre, launched in 2024, that was created with data and AI near the centre of gravity. ANSR says the Bengaluru team was set up to drive innovation in digital, analytics and technology across customer engagement, omnichannel, e-commerce and supply chain. Reuters then reported in August 2025 that Best Buy’s India headcount, about 350 at the time, could rise to about 500 within months. Speaking separately, Surendra Bashani said: “There is a really deep pool of talent here with data and AI.” Reuters also quoted Nithya Subramanian saying the company is growing “leaps and bounds in India,” and that Bengaluru is Best Buy’s largest tech hub.

Then there is Hyderabad, where the newest wave looks less like a service outpost and more like a command post. McDonald’s describes its Hyderabad office as driving global operations alongside its Chicago headquarters, with opportunities in global technology and enterprise data, analytics and AI. Reuters reported that McDonald’s wants India to become a key hub for data governance, engineering and platform architecture as it intensifies AI investment through 2027. Heineken’s April 2026 opening in the same city sharpened the pattern. Chief financial officer Harold van den Broek said the new centre would help create “digitally enabled ways of working”, and Akos Magyari said plainly: “Hyderabad offers deep expertise in digital, AI and business services.”

The Frictions Beneath the Boom

This shift is not frictionless. Data residency rules can complicate the flow of customer information, media exposure logs and transaction-linked datasets across borders. India’s privacy rules now give companies more structure, but also more compliance work. RBI-regulated payment data must still sit in India, and the DPDP regime is being implemented in phases, with room for future restrictions on cross-border transfers. For global marketers, that means India can be the intelligence hub, but sometimes only if the data stack is redesigned around localisation, anonymisation or federated access.

The second challenge is judgment. Optimisation work can travel more easily than cultural intuition. That is why many brands are moving measurement, experimentation and model-building into India, while still keeping final market-facing calls tight to local commercial teams. Even within India hubs, quality control is explicit. Target’s Bengaluru role for campaign performance and insights puts data accuracy, reporting output quality control and market-level insight at the core of the job. And even with deep supply, the AI labour market is tightening fast. Industry reporting has warned of a 38% to 42% AI talent gap in GCC hiring, even as EY found 81% of centres are still racing to upskill internal teams.

What the Shift Means Next

The ecosystem around the brands is already adjusting. Agencies are moving with them. WPP said in December 2024 that its Global Delivery Centre would be headquartered in India, building on an 11,000-strong workforce in the country and offering capabilities across media, content, customer experience, commerce, technology, data and design. Chief executive Mark Read said the model lets agency teams and clients “tap into specialist expertise and new capabilities.” In other words, if brands are moving intelligence work to India, their agency partners are following the same trail.

The implications for India are visible not only in employment and skills, but in the physical economy. JLL says GCCs accounted for 37.7% of gross office leasing in 2025, taking more than 31 million square feet, the highest on record, while Bengaluru and Hyderabad both posted standout years. EY’s 2025 pulse survey found that more than half of Indian GCCs already hold shared accountability for global decisions. The Indian state, for its part, is leaning in with tax clarity, infrastructure and public signalling. As EY’s Ritika Loganey Gupta put it, GCCs are “no longer just cost centres.” For marketing operations, that phrase may be the cleanest summary of what is happening. The job that is moving is not routine execution. It is the intelligence layer itself.