According to recent reports, approximately 5 lakh Indian women are currently working in Global Capability Centers (GCC). Global Capability Centers are offshore units set up by multinational corporations to perform various strategic functions.
Key Highlights of the Report
GCCs Growth
- India hosts nearly 1,600 GCCs, with a substantial addition of 2.8 lakh employees in 2022-23, expanding its talent base to over 1.6 million.
- Nearly five lakh women currently work in Indian global capability centres (GCCs), comprising 28% of the total 16 lakh employees across GCCs in India. Gender diversity in the deep tech ecosystem stands at 23%.
Executive and Senior Level Roles
- Only 6.7% of women hold executive roles in GCCs, and 5.1% in deep tech organisations.
- At the senior level (9-12 years of experience) in GCCs, the representation of women stands at 15.7%.
Graduate Representation
- The median representation of women graduates from top engineering universities stands at 25% between 2020-23.
Challenges and Systemic Barriers
- Women’s attrition is influenced by factors such as family and caregiving responsibilities, limited access to career advancement and leadership opportunities, and poor work-life balance.
Global Capability Centers
- Global capability centres (GCCs) represent offshore establishments set up by companies to deliver a range of services to their parent entities.
- Operating as internal entities within the global corporate framework, these centres offer specialised capabilities including IT services, research and development, customer support, and various other business functions.
- GCCs play a crucial role in capitalising on cost efficiencies, tapping into talent reservoirs, and fostering collaboration between parent enterprises and their offshore counterparts.
- Special Economic Zones (SEZs) can provide a fertile ground for GCCs to flourish by offering several advantages like tax breaks, simplified regulations and streamlined bureaucracy.
- Present Status:
- In 2022–23, around 1,600 GCCs made up a market of USD 46 billion, employing 1.7 million people.
- Within GCCs, professional and consulting services are the fastest-growing segment despite only accounting for 25% of India’s services exports.
- Their compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31% over the last four years significantly outpaces computer services (16% CAGR) and R&D services (13% CAGR).
Special Economic Zones (SEZ)
- An SEZ is a territory within a country that is typically duty-free (Fiscal Concession) and has different business and commercial laws chiefly to encourage investment and create employment.
- SEZs are created also to better administer these areas, thereby increasing the ease of doing business.
- Asia’s first EPZ (Export Processing Zones) was established in 1965 at Kandla, Gujarat.
- The Special Economic Zones Act was passed in 2005. The Act came into force along with the SEZ Rules in 2006.
- Presently, 379 SEZs are notified, out of which 265 are operational. About 64% of the SEZs are located in five states – Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
- The Baba Kalyani-led committee was constituted by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to study the existing SEZ policy of India and had submitted its recommendations in November 2018.
- It was set up with a broad objective to evaluate the SEZ policy towards making it WTO (World Trade Organisation) compatible and to bring in global best practices to maximise capacity utilisation and to maximise potential output of the SEZs.