GCCs see salary hike of 9.9% in 2025, slight uptick from last year

Bengaluru: At a time when India is witnessing a low wage growth coupled with an uneven job market, Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are projecting an average salary hike of 9.9 per cent in 2025 with a focus on talent retention, a report by Talent500, an ANSR company, showed on Tuesday. The high demand for skilled professionals within GCCs has continued  to drive salary increases.

However, this is only marginally higher as compared to 2024, where GCCs gave out a pay hike of 9.6 per cent.

To remain competitive in a tight skilled market, companies are implementing non-merit increases, i.e. salary adjustments that are not based on individual performance but rather on factors like cost of living, inflation, or industry standards, to attract and retain talent.

This comes at a time when India’s top IT software services companies have been either reducing variable pay, delaying wage hike or hiking in low single digit. 

A report by TeamLease Digital last year showed that GCCs were paying at least 12-20 per cent higher salaries for the same tech roles as its IT services and non-tech sector peers. 

Overall attrition rate has also seen a downtick of about 17 per cent, with voluntary attrition at a record low of 12.6 per cent in 2024. When compared to the IT sector services, for which attrition has been a concern, the number is somewhat lower. Rather than relying solely on pay increases to curb attrition, forward-thinking companies are providing career opportunities in high-end technologies, catering to employee needs, the Talent500 report stated. 

Organisations, in general, are involved in upskilling their workforce especially in emerging tech sectors like generative artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and cloud engineering, among others, it said.

According to estimates, India presently has over 1,700 GCCs employ more than 1.9 million professionals.