Two Million Indians Build for Global Companies. Who Owns What They Build?

India's global capability centres employ about 2.36 million people and earned about $98.4 billion in FY2026. The work belongs to companies headquartered elsewhere. A school system that rewards execution trained the people for it; when AI does more of the execution, the scarce part is deciding what to build.

India is where a large share of global companies get their work done.

The numbers

In FY2026, India hosted about 2,117 global capability centres, the in-house offices that multinational companies run in India for engineering, technology, finance and operations. They employed about 2.36 million people and earned about $98.4 billion in revenue. These are Nasscom and Zinnov's estimates for the year. [1]

A global capability centre is owned by a company headquartered somewhere else. What its people build belongs to that company.

How it started

The story is usually told as one of openness, but it began with a departure. In June 1978 IBM shut its Indian operations rather than reduce its stake to the 40% cap that a 1973 amendment to the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act required. [2, 3]

In 1985 Texas Instruments opened a software design centre in Bangalore. By the company's own account, it was the first multinational to set one up in India, and the first to export software over its own satellite dish. [4]

On 5 June 1991 the government set up Software Technology Parks of India to promote software exports. [5] What followed is well known: India built one of the largest pools of engineers and operators that companies anywhere could hire.

What the system trained for

That pool did not appear by accident. A school system that screens children through examinations and entrance tests produces people who are very good at doing well-defined work fast and correctly. We make that case in the reward problem: what earns marks and admission becomes the real curriculum.

For forty years that fit the work. A capability centre is largely built to carry out work designed somewhere else, and India's graduates were trained to carry it out well.

What changes now

AI can now do a growing share of the execution. When it does, the part that stays with people changes. As our paper puts it: "What stays with the person is the part that is judgment: deciding where the machine goes, and for whom."

Deciding what to build is also what a country's research does. India spent 0.84% of its GDP on research and development in 2023-24, a record, up from 0.64% three years earlier. [6] It has no university in the global top 100. [7]

What the numbers cannot tell us

The revenue and headcount figures are industry estimates, not a census. Many centres now do engineering and research work, not only operations, and the numbers do not separate the two. Nor do the figures show how much of what is built in India is first imagined in India.

Where Ilanooo stands

The talent is already coming to India, and the country has a large base in science and engineering. India should use it to build its own things, not only other companies' things, and build the research facilities to match.

That starts in school. A child who spends twelve years being rewarded for carrying out someone else's plan will be very good at it. A child who also spends those years deciding what to make, and making it, is the one who will decide what gets built next. We set out what it would take in If India's Government Schools Were the Ones Families Chose and India Needs Five Universities in the Global Top 100.

Sources

  1. Nasscom and Zinnov, India GCC Landscape Report 2026, as reported by BW Businessworld (FY2026 estimates).
  2. Lok Sabha, reply on IBM and Coca-Cola, 11 March 1980.
  3. Business Today, IBM's history in India; The Wire, George Fernandes and the IBM exit.
  4. Texas Instruments, TI celebrates 20 years in India and Our journey in India began in 1985 (company sources).
  5. Software Technology Parks of India, About STPI.
  6. Department of Science and Technology, R&D Statistics at a Glance 2025-26, as reported by The Policy Edge.
  7. India Needs Five Universities in the Global Top 100. It Has None.