After Chennai, it is Coimbatore, Madurai, and Tiruchirappalli, that are emerging as manufacturing hubs. Coimbatore is India's top Tier-II city in terms of the number of GCCs, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield.
Tamil Nadu last month announced a plan to make industrial city Hosur a hub for global capability centres (GCCs), after setting up a similar thriving network in Chennai and Coimbatore.
GCCs in Tamil Nadu are spread out, giving the state an edge over Karnataka and Telangana, where such infrastructure is largely in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Tamil Nadu has more than 250 of the 1,800 GCCs in India, employing 150,000 people in the state. It is expected to have 460 GCCs by 2030.
A panel discussed 'Shaping Tamil Nadu's Future: Role of GCCs & Beyond' during the Business Standard Tamil Nadu Round Table 2025 in Chennai on March 12.
The panellists were Gangapriya Chakraverti, managing director, Ford Business Solutions; Siva Padmanabhan, MD, AstraZeneca India; Kewyn George, global director of information services at Expeditors; and Jaikumar Subramanian, partner at Deloitte India.
A GCC is a strategic unit that supports an organisation's global operations, according to one definition.
GCCs in India operate across businesses as varied as finance, retail, health care, aerospace, and oil and gas, according to a recent report by information technology (IT) industry association Nasscom.
GCCs are expected to contribute about $112 billion in IT export revenue in FY25.
Ford, World Bank Group, Pfizer, Amazon, Walmart, Standard Chartered, Citibank, and Bank of America, are among global organisations that have GCCs in Chennai.
British-Swedish pharmaceutical major AstraZeneca last year expanded its GCC in Chennai, marking it the company's largest such centre worldwide.
GCCs can help Tamil Nadu in its target of becoming a $1 trillion economy by 2030, according to state government estimates.
What GCCs can do
"There has been a rapid transformation in what GCCs can deliver. From basic processes and SLAs (service-level agreements), we have had joint ownerships with the headquarters to deliver on important projects," said Chakraverti.
"And then we have ownership for new work which is being led, managed, and run from here. We take ownership, drive a project, and engage in product development using high-end analytics to make the right decisions."
Ford started in Tamil Nadu in 1998 and has 12,000 employees in the state. Its GCC in Chennai provides services to Ford Motors across functions.
"There is access to talent in this state and the talent base has to be willing to go out of their comfort zone. There is this huge ecosystem of automobile talent," said Chakraverti.
GCCs will boost Tamil Nadu's knowledge economy by creating high-quality jobs and attracting talent from other states, said Padmanabhan, of AstraZeneca India.
The drugmaker's GCC in Chennai employs about 3,500 people and was set up a decade ago.
"The mission of GCCs should be to build products and platforms for the world, which means a lot of focus on R&D (research and development). However, that should not be confined to physical laboratories and scientists. We are talking about the digital avatar of R&D."
Tamil Nadu's engineering talent makes it an attractive destination for GCCs, according to panellists.
George, of Expeditors, said 20 per cent of STEM graduates in India are from Tamil Nadu and 25 per cent of all hiring for such talent is from the state.
"Product management knowledge is important along with R&D. While 90 per cent of the centres are in Chennai, there are also other viable places such as Coimbatore, Trichy, Salem, and Madurai. Because these cities are also close to many engineering colleges. Talent is the new currency, and Tamil Nadu is printing it," said George.
India's states are wooing companies to set up GCCs and the central government wants Tier-II cities to have such centres, sparking interest in a sector that has hired more people than IT services companies for two years straight.
Knowledge hubs
Deloitte India's Subramanian said Tamil Nadu should strengthen collaboration with industry and universities for economic growth.
"Policy will play an important role in this growth, and so is the knowledge of global enterprises in GCCs," he noted.
After Chennai, it is Coimbatore, Madurai, and Tiruchirappalli, that are emerging as manufacturing hubs. Coimbatore is India's top Tier-II city in terms of the number of GCCs, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield.
Another report by real estate consultancy firm CBRE said Chennai will add about 12-13 million square feet of premium office space in 2025-26.
"The whole manufacturing industry is transforming to a service model. The state is not only good at manufacturing, but also the services component. Within that, we are good at business process, engineering R&D, and software product development," said Subramanian.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
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