Home/Insights/India team build 8 min read · Updated September 2026
INDIA TEAM BUILD · GCC AND OUTSOURCING

What Is a Global Capability Centre, and How Is It Different From Outsourcing?

A global capability centre is your own office in another country, staffed by your own employees, working on your own roadmap. Outsourcing is a vendor's team delivering against a contract. Four differences follow from that: who employs the people, who owns the IP, who sets the roadmap, and what remains when it ends. Here is the definition, what each model costs, the size at which a GCC starts to make sense, and how to start before the entity exists.

PM
Pratik Mokashi
COO, Talhive · 40+ India mandates for US and EU clients
Key takeawaysThe whole piece in five lines
01A global capability centre is your own employees, in another country, working on your roadmap. Outsourcing is a vendor's employees working to a contract.
02The four differences that matter: who employs the people, who owns the IP, who controls the roadmap, and what happens to the knowledge when it ends.
03GCCs cost more to stand up and less to run at scale. Outsourcing is the reverse.
04Below roughly 15 to 20 people a GCC rarely justifies the setup, and an employer of record is usually the better route in.
05The decision is about control and continuity, not primarily about cost.
Discuss a mandate →

What is a global capability centre?

A global capability centre, usually shortened to GCC, is a company's own office in another country staffed by its own employees, working on its own products and roadmap. The distinction from outsourcing is ownership: in a GCC the people are on your payroll, the IP is yours by default, and the knowledge stays with you. In outsourcing, a vendor employs the people and delivers against a contract, and when that contract ends, the team and most of what they learned go with it.

"Our board keeps asking whether we should set up a GCC in India. Half the room thinks it means outsourcing and the other half thinks it means opening an office. What actually is it, and how do we know if we need one?"
CFO, Series C SaaS · evaluating India for engineering and support

The definition, before anything else.

Who employs the people
GCC: you do
Outsourcing: the vendor does, and they can reassign them.
Who owns the IP
GCC: you do, by default
Outsourcing: whatever the contract says, and it varies.
Who sets the roadmap
GCC: your product org
Outsourcing: the statement of work, renegotiated when it changes.
What remains when it ends
GCC: the team and the knowledge
Outsourcing: documentation, if you asked for it.

So, what is a global capability centre? It is your own office in another country, staffed by your own employees, working on your own products. The term is newer than the structure, which used to be called a captive centre, and the rebrand happened because the modern version does product and engineering work rather than back office processing.

The four differences that actually matter.

Every other distinction between the two models follows from these four, so they are worth being precise about.

15-20people
Rough size at which a GCC starts to justify its setup cost
60-90days
Senior notice periods in India, which set your realistic ramp
1hire
The leadership hire that should come before the rest of the team

Outsourcing buys you capacity. A capability centre buys you capability. The words are close and the operating models are not.

What each one costs.

DIMENSIONGCCOUTSOURCINGNOTE
Setup costHigherLowerEntity, compliance, leadership hire
Cost per engineer at scaleLowerHigherNo vendor margin on each seat
Time to first hireSlowerFasterUnless you start on an employer of record
Value retained if it endsThe teamDocumentationThe difference most boards underweight

When outsourcing is the better answer.

It is a legitimate model and it wins in clear cases. Work that is peripheral to your product, genuinely finite, or needs a specialist capability you will not use again. Buying that as a service is sensible, and building a permanent team for it is not.

How to start without waiting for the entity.

01
Hire the leader first, through an employer of record
The first senior hire sets the calibre ceiling for everyone after them. An EOR lets them join in weeks while the entity is incorporated in parallel.
02
Incorporate while they serve notice
Senior notice periods in India run 60 to 90 days. That window is enough to complete most of the legal setup, so the two tracks run together rather than in sequence.
03
Let the leader hire the team
Candidates ask who they would report to, and a named credible leader is the strongest recruiting asset a new centre has.
04
Transfer onto the entity once it is live
Planned from the start, this is routine. Unplanned, it becomes a compliance exercise nobody scheduled.

Tell us the headcount and the horizon and we will tell you whether a GCC is worth it yet.

See how we build India teams →

How we build them.

We build India capability centres leadership-first, on dedicated searches with milestone-based fees, because the first hire determines the quality of every hire after it. The NBA's India technology team in Mumbai and Loopio's India build both ran this way, with full offer acceptance and no first-year attrition on the NBA team.

Send the twelve month plan. We will come back with the hiring order and an honest timeline.

Discuss a mandate →

Frequently asked questions.

Global capability centre. You will also see global capability center, global in-house centre, and older terms like captive centre or shared services centre. They describe broadly the same structure: your own offshore team rather than a vendor's.
Employment and control. In a GCC the engineers are your employees working on your roadmap. In outsourcing they are the vendor's employees delivering against a statement of work. That single difference cascades into IP ownership, roadmap control, and what remains when the arrangement ends.
Broadly above 15 to 20 people, though the real trigger is strategic rather than numeric. If the work is core to your product and you intend to keep it for years, a GCC is usually right earlier. If it is peripheral and finite, outsourcing may remain right at any size.
Eventually yes, but not on day one. Most companies start hiring through an employer of record while the entity is incorporated in parallel, which lets the first hires join before the legal setup completes. We cover the routes in our GCC versus EOR comparison.
Not at first. Setup costs more and takes longer. At scale and over several years the running cost per engineer is usually lower, and you keep the capability. The honest framing is that you pay more upfront for control and continuity.