India aims to expand GCC footprint beyond top six cities for greater inclusiveness: MeitY
At the GCC Summit in the national capital, Singh said identifying best practices from existing GCC hubs can provide direction for emerging locations to attract GCCs. The summit was organised by industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
'We have seen that GCCs are hardly opting for these tier-II cities,' he said. 'Our approach will be to take the best practices in the six (top) locations, and based on that, create guidelines for the other states to follow.'
Speaking at the same event, Ajay Vij, senior country managing director for Accenture India, said the company has expanded to seven or eight emerging cities in the last three years. 'Some of their infrastructure (in the smaller cities is so good that it) puts the infrastructure in the rest of the metros at shame,' Vij said. 'A lot of infrastructure work needs to happen in our existing metros… It's a brand we need to build for the country.'In addition to a focus on infrastructure, Vij said a dedicated long-term strategy is needed to prepare the talent for the future and to move from being a service-oriented country to an innovation-oriented one.At the summit, CII released a report outlining industry recommendations for a GCC policy framework. The February budget had announced that the government will create a national GCC policy. MeitY has set up an industry-led panel to chalk out a framework.According to the report, for regulatory simplification, GCCs also need a national-level single-window clearance and rationalisation of the safe harbour margins in transfer pricing. They should also get concessional tax rates for engaging in R&D and IP creation, it said.The CII report's "strategic vision" for 2030 pegged the gross value addition (GVA) of GCCs at somewhere between $470 billion and $600 billion and that the number of GCCs would increase to about 5,000 from 1,800 now. Direct, indirect and induced employment could increase from about 10 million to 20-25 million, it said.This will take GCCs' contribution to India's GDP from about 2% now to 3%, said Romal Shetty, CEO of Deloitte and co-chair of CII's GCC task force. India should create talent acceleration hubs and a national digital talent platform, he said.Additionally, the country should create digital economic zones housing GPU-based data centres, academia, startups and colocated workspaces.'There has to be plug-and-play infrastructure if tier-2 has to come up,' said Shetty.'The GCCs that are around engineering R&D have the highest contribution to India's exchequer,' said Gunjan Samtani, co-chairman of Goldman Sachs in India and country head of Goldman Sachs Services India.'The per-employee revenue that gets added and the scale is significantly higher than the traditional business process outsourcing,' said Samtani, who also chairs CII's GCC task force. Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. The hybrid vs. EV rivalry: Why Maruti and Mahindra pull in different directions. What's best?
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