TFS Gulf 
- Hi, I’m Andrew Simoes, Practice Head – GCC, Shared Services & Accounting Firms at Michael Page India.
- I’ve been placing finance professionals in India’s GCCs for over a decade.
- Since 2015, I’ve watched the perception of GCCs shift dramatically from being seen as a back-office compromise to becoming strategic hubs running end-to-end finance functions.
- Here’s what I’m seeing in 2026 and what it means for finance and tax professionals considering a GCC career.
India’s GCCs aren’t what they used to be
“I work in a GCC.”
If you’d said that a decade ago, people would squint and ask, “GCC… you mean the Gulf? Saudi? UAE?”
They went by many names: shared services, offshore delivery units, or global in-house centres.
And the work was mostly transactional and operational, which nobody put on their CV with pride.
Whenever I’d visit campuses and mention shared services to students, their exact response was, “Back office? No chance.”
Today, it’s a complete reversal.
Why are GCCs suddenly hot?
The parent companies don’t consider the India teams as a cost centre anymore. They are building end-to-end finance capabilities out of India.
- End-to-end controllership runs out of India
- Full budget ownership, not just MIS reporting
- Forecasting models built in India, not handed down from a CFO in London
- Direct access to global CFOs and business heads
- Investment banks and PE firms are among the fastest-growing GCC segments right now
What I’m placing people into today looks nothing like before.
Finance roles GCCs are actually hiring for?
Controllers who know IFRS, US GAAP, and IndAs in depth (not surface-level) are in huge demand.
The kind that holds up when a global controller starts asking hard questions at 11 pm on a Tuesday.
Modern controllership professionals must demonstrate,
- How to reduce close cycles,
- How to automate reconciliations,
- How to redesign the reporting architecture.
- Who can also talk SAP S/4HANA
If you are a controller who speaks both the accounting standards + digital transformation language, you are extremely hireable in this market.
Forget Excel-based reporting.
FP&A Professionals:
- Forward-looking budget ownership
- Driver-based forecasting models
- Scenario planning
- Direct engagement with business unit heads
Rise in senior tax leadership in India. Transfer pricing, indirect tax, and tax technology roles are growing, though global tax strategy leadership from India remains rare due to jurisdictional limits.
Big 4 GCCs in India are also increasingly trying to fill the talent gap.
As their focus shifts toward consulting and advisory, more professionals are moving into GCC roles than ever before.
Overall, GCCs are increasingly attracting strategic global roles, although some positions, like global tax heads, remain country-specific due to legal constraints.
Are GCCs prone to layoffs?
As GCCs get more sophisticated, as AI disrupts the model, old transactional roles become redundant and new strategic ones come in.
So, GCCs will see more of a restructuring, not layoffs.
- The ecosystem added a net of about 150,000 jobs last year.
- Various estimates put GCC layoffs at fewer than 50,000
There were only about 90 greenfield GCCs set up in India last year, adding roughly 10,000–15,000 roles between them.
The bulk of new jobs, including BFSI alone, adding 20,000–25,000, came from GCCs that have been established since 2010. The investment just keeps coming, regardless of the setup timeline.
Is AI restructuring GCC finance teams?
Remember when Twitter had 2,000 full-time engineers before it got acquired by Elon Musk in 2022? Now it has roughly 25-30.
That may seem extreme, but the finance side of GCCs is seeing similar disruption.
What’s happening? Transactional finance roles (P2P, O2C, R2R) are rapidly automated.
AI now:
- Reconciles accounts faster than humans
- Processes invoices flawlessly
- Generates variance reports automatically
The role most likely to disappear?
It is your default “People Manager”, someone who’s just overseeing delivery and managing site operations.
If your role doesn’t fall into:
- Deep functional expertise
- Tech-enabled finance: Finance professionals who can actually drive transformation, not just talk about it.
- Senior stakeholder influence: People who can align global stakeholders, convince them to bring more work to India, and drive change inside the organisation.
…it could disappear fast.
Roles with a high attrition rate?
Attrition remains high in classic customer support and operations roles, but in highly sought-after areas like AI and ML, attrition now exceeds 20%.
GCC salary: Hype vs. reality
At a recent GCC Summit in Bengaluru, a wild claim went around: “A CA earning ₹1 lakh in a traditional company can earn 2–3x in a GCC.”
Wish I could say, it’s true…But that’s misleading.
Large FMCG and PE-backed companies still pay top CAs competitively.
GCCs, however, deliver consistent, compounding growth: 9–10% annual hikes can translate to 30%+ cumulative growth over three years.
Is there really a career ceiling in GCC?
I get this question from senior finance professionals a lot.
Honestly, it depends on what ceiling you are measuring.
Client-facing roles
- If you mean market-facing business development roles at the headquarters, then yes, that ceiling exists.
- Those roles require you to be present in the onshore market. You cannot just expect to deliver that work sitting out of a GCC in India, and that is not going to change.
Non-client-facing core business function.
If you mean the depth of finance work, the seniority of global stakeholder engagement, and the ability to drive enterprise-level transformation from India, then that ceiling is almost non-existent.
Also read: Deloitte’s Romal Shetty says: India’s next biggest job creator? GCCs
Next wave of GCCs
When I started, 80% of my GCC clients were US companies. Today, that’s dropped to 55–60%.
Why? European, Japanese, and Australian firms are moving in fast.
But here’s the twist: not all roads lead to Bengaluru anymore. Talent studies show European clients are now looking at Coimbatore, Kochi, and other Tier 2 cities a conversation that barely existed three years ago.
Why does this matter? In Tier 2 cities, you’re more likely to land a senior leadership role than get lost as a mid-level hire in a saturated hub.
And don’t sleep on mid-market GCCs. Over 60% are PE-backed, meaning aggressive growth plans. The people who join now, while they’re still small, are the ones who will become senior leaders as they scale.
Also read: KPMG GCC India leader unveils big shifts & billion-dollar opportunities
Wrapping up…
I’ve seen very senior CAs (15 to 20 years of experience) whose entire tech exposure was limited to SAP, and that too a few FICO modules…That’s not going to cut it in 2026.
GCCs want you to wear multiple hats at once:
- Drive finance transformation,
- Understand automation, and
- Operate in a technology-enabled finance function.
We are in the best time of our lives for the GCC space.
