Technology

Multinational corporations continue to scale Global Capability Centres in India, attracted by deep engineering talent and cost competitiveness. This trend is accelerating demand for office real estate, IT services, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure. India now hosts over 1,600 GCCs and the count is expected to grow materially through 2030.

India is emerging as a leading market for AI PC adoption in Asia Pacific, according to IDC-backed research cited by Dell. This is expected to accelerate enterprise hardware refresh cycles and drive incremental demand across IT distribution, peripherals, and managed services ecosystems. Faster AI PC penetration could compress traditional 4-5 year refresh cycles.

Indian manufacturers are increasingly investing in automation, IoT, and AI-driven process optimisation to improve global competitiveness. Government-backed production-linked incentive schemes are catalysing technology spending in sectors such as electronics, semiconductors, and automotive. This creates a durable demand pool for industrial software, sensors, and connectivity solutions.

Rising AI workloads are driving significant investment in domestic data centre capacity, GPU clusters, and high-speed connectivity infrastructure. India's data localisation push and growing hyperscaler commitments from AWS, Google, and Microsoft are reinforcing this buildout. The infrastructure layer is expected to underpin long-term growth in cloud services, AI platforms, and edge computing.

New MoUs between industry bodies such as ICC and premier institutions like IIT Bombay, alongside international partnerships with South Korean agencies, are formalising R&D and commercialisation pipelines. These collaborations are expected to accelerate deep-tech startup formation and applied AI research. Over a 10-year horizon, this strengthens India's position in high-value technology exports.

Macroeconomic uncertainty in key markets such as the US and Europe continues to pressure discretionary IT spending, affecting revenue visibility for Indian IT services exporters. Clients are increasingly demanding outcome-based pricing and AI-driven efficiency gains, compressing traditional time-and-material billing models. This structural shift requires significant re-skilling and business model adaptation.

Generative AI tools and agentic workflows are beginning to automate tasks that historically formed the core of India's IT outsourcing value proposition, including coding, testing, and BPO functions. While this creates new service opportunities, the transition period poses headcount and margin risks for mid-tier IT firms. Companies slow to pivot toward AI-augmented delivery models face structural revenue erosion.

Despite a large engineering graduate base, India faces a shortage of professionals with specialised skills in AI/ML, chip design, and cybersecurity. This mismatch is inflating compensation for niche talent and creating execution bottlenecks for both domestic and multinational technology projects. Bridging this gap requires sustained investment in curriculum reform and industry-academia linkages.

India's evolving data protection framework under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act introduces compliance costs and operational uncertainty for technology companies handling large volumes of user data. Cross-border data flow restrictions could complicate GCC operations and cloud service delivery models. Regulatory ambiguity in AI governance adds an additional layer of uncertainty for enterprise technology deployments.

India's technology hardware ecosystem remains heavily dependent on imported semiconductors and components, exposing it to geopolitical supply chain disruptions. While domestic semiconductor fabrication initiatives are underway, meaningful self-sufficiency is a decade-long endeavour. In the interim, currency volatility and export controls by major chip-producing nations represent a persistent cost and availability risk.