Non-IT companies including real estate, staffing and cab-hailing platforms are setting up GCC practices or investing in data centres to capitalize on growing tech needs as automation tools rewrite how companies run their business.
At least three non-tech companies have set up partnerships or doubled down on investments in data centre infrastructure over the past 12 months while a couple of them have established global capability centre (GCC) practices, which help in designing and setting up GCCs.
Cab-hailing platform Uber entered into a partnership with the Adani Group to set up a data centre in Ahmedabad. Uber chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi announced the partnership on 14 May during his five-day visit to the country. The centre’s capacity has not been disclosed but the facility is expected to go live by the end of 2026.
This comes eight months after Macrotech Developers Ltd (Lodha) entered the data centre business through a partnership with the Maharashtra government in September. So far, the real estate company has committed about ₹1.3 trillion for a 2.5-gigawatt (GW) data centre park.
The developer will build centres with essential infrastructure such as power supply and cooling systems of about 1 GW capacity for data centres and lease the space to hyperscalers.
Lodha has sold land to Amazon Web Services and ST Telemedia Global Data Centres to set up data centres and plans to fund the project largely through land monetization, targeting over ₹12,000 crore in land sales from FY27.
Peer Hiranandani Group entered data centre development and management through its subsidiary, Yotta Data Services, in 2019. Yotta operates five data centres across India—two in Navi Mumbai, facilities in Greater Noida and its newest one in GIFT City, Gujarat—offering land, power, cloud and managed security services. Yotta plans to bring about 500 MW of AI-focused data centre capacity online in 2026.
Primed to benefit
One analyst said real estate companies stand to benefit from entering the data centre space.
“Real estate companies will be primed to benefit by selling basic land and infrastructure for data centres. To set up a data centre, real estate, physical racks, cooling and power facilities are a must, each of which can be managed by these real estate companies,” said Sushovon Nayak, lead IT analyst at Anand Rathi Institutional Equities.
He added that India was a prime location for data centres as “getting real estate at an affordable rate and blue-collar workforce like electricians and plumbers in the US is tough.”
“Data centres provide a big opportunity to companies despite being capex heavy because most of the AI load requires data centre facilities,” said Amit Chandra, lead IT analyst at HDFC Securities. “As companies shift to using more AI in their workloads, the data requirements increase and GPU data centres, which provide computing power for AI models, is a ripe field for entry.”
Real estate companies are also looking at setting up their own GCC practice, which will enable them to serve clients.
The Embassy Group completed one year of its GCC unit, Embark, last month when it inaugurated a 1,000-seater GCC for a US banking firm, Standard, in Bengaluru. A key benefit for the Embassy Group is the availability of vast office spaces where clients can start work.
Its GCC practice, which employs about 70 people, also provides location, tax-related and legal advisory to clients. It has its own talent acquisition team for companies looking to set up tech centres in India.
Embassy’s speciality is that it has an abundance of office space where clients can pay as per their requirements, a person with knowledge of the matter said, adding that Embark has set up 10 GCCs for clients.
"As a matter of fact, our incubation space flexes with you—start with 1 seat, scale to 500, or right-size back down as your needs evolve, all on a pay-as-you-go basis with no wasted space or long-term lock-in. Physical and network security are built in from the start," said Aravind Maiya, co-founder and chief executive of Embark, in response to Mint's email.
Staffing revenue
Staffing services provider Quess Corp, which manages 460,000 people across companies, set up its GCC practice in June last year. This practice, called Origint, offers workspace solutions, technology, compliance management and talent to clients setting up GCCs in the country.
Quess provides employees to more than 350 GCCs and this business is handled by Sanjay Shetty. During its press briefing in June last year, the company’s management said it would tie up with its demerged entities Digitide for AI-first digital solutions and Bluspring for infrastructure management.
“Embassy already leases office space to most of the GCCs in India. Quess pulls a huge percent of its professional staffing revenue from GCCs. When your biggest customer is also your fastest-growing customer, you stop just selling one service or product to them. You try to address more of their workflow, and this is what we are seeing,” said Achyuta Ghosh, executive research leader for GCCs at HFS Research.
He added that setting up GCCs offers a greater revenue challenge than entering the data centre space as “set-up work has thin margins, and in most cases, a relatively short end date.” Setting up a GCC practice might yield higher returns in the shorter term.
"There is a faster growth of GCCs as compared with data centres, which makes it more lucrative for companies to set up GCC practices,” said Namratha Dharshan, chief business leader for India Research at Information Services Group.