EXL Service to open 2 new India hubs as AI spend surges in 2026
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES, and INDIA — Driven by a global client shift toward artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics, Nasdaq-listed EXL Service will establish two new delivery centers in Tier 2 or Tier 3 Indian cities this year.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Rohit Kapoor revealed the plan, aiming to tap into infrastructure and talent advantages beyond major metros, as the company capitalizes on IT spending increasingly skewed toward AI, infrastructure, and cybersecurity.
“From an infrastructure standpoint, we do think that going to the tier 2/3 cities in India will be important for us, so we’ve identified a shortlist of a couple of cities where we want to be able to build new infrastructure and to offer services to our clients from those locations,” said Kapoor.
EXL’s strategic shift: Tapping Tier 2 talent and agility
Business Standard reports that having employed nearly 45,000 of its total global workforce of 63,000 in India, the company considers these locations to be very important for future infrastructure.
The new centers will have a targeted, meaningful size and scale of 500-1,000 Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) to attract management talent and serve a variety of clients through these new hubs.
This growth highlights the central position of India in the ecosystem of EXL delivery, which the CEO refers to as its outstanding talent in digital operations, data analytics, and AI.
EXL plans to decentralize out of metro saturation areas and develop capacity at low cost, while still utilizing the deep domain knowledge that underpins its services to insurance, healthcare, and banking customers, who comprise 80% of its revenue.
Shift from cost savings to AI-powered workflow redesign
The growth is directly driven by a revolutionary shift among global clients who no longer seek cost savings but rather a workflow transformation driven by AI.
Kapoor states that “today our clients are asking us to reimagine their workflows so there’s a lot of innovation and creativity associated with it. There’s a lot of engagement that we need to drive between human and the AI and bring pieces together, so it is a very different way of working.”
This change is reflected in EXL’s revenue composition, where data analytics and AI account for 56% of its nearly $2 billion in annual revenue, surpassing digital operations management at 44%.
Enterprises are seeking greater efficiency in traditional areas like application maintenance but are opening new spending layers for AI-driven solutions, such as insurance underwriting, where AI can slash quote times from weeks to hours, transforming human roles to oversight. Kapoor predicts 2026 will see focused investments in such proven AI use cases.
EXL Service ranked #16 in the OA500 2025, an objective index of the world’s top 500 outsourcing companies. The 2026 edition of the OA500 is expected to be released in March.
