India’s Karnataka offers free hiring support to new global GCCs
KARNATAKA, INDIA — The Indian state of Karnataka has signed a two-year Memorandum of Understanding with Naukri.com to give newly established Global Capability Centers (GCCs) free hiring support during their first 90 days of operations — a first-of-its-kind incentive aimed at accelerating multinational expansion into one of the world’s largest tech talent markets.
According to a report from digitalLEARNING, the deal positions Karnataka, already home to Bengaluru’s tech corridor, to compete more aggressively for the wave of GCC investment now flowing into India from United States and European enterprises.
The partnership is being executed through the Karnataka Innovation and Technology Society and aligns with the state’s broader strategy to attract global capital while building out a distributed technology workforce.
What the 90-day hiring package includes
Eligible GCCs will receive a customized starter package featuring employer branding support, assisted hiring services and premium talent sourcing tools at no cost during their early setup phase.
The package is designed to compress time-to-hire — a persistent bottleneck for multinationals launching capability centers — and to help incoming firms build production-ready teams within weeks rather than months.
The agreement also ties into the KATALYST platform, Karnataka’s ease-of-doing-business initiative tailored specifically for capability centers.
“Karnataka’s leadership in the GCC sector is driven by its deep talent pool and strong innovation ecosystem,” said Priyank Kharge, Karnataka’s Minister for IT/BT.
He added that the collaboration with Naukri.com would enable faster and more efficient access to skilled professionals.
A push to move GCCS beyond Bengaluru
A central objective of the partnership is to spread GCC growth into Karnataka’s smaller cities, easing the talent and infrastructure strain on Bengaluru.
Targeted hubs include Mysuru, Mangaluru, Hubballi, Belagavi, Kalaburagi, Tumakuru and Shivamogga — cities the state is positioning as the next layer of its technology economy.
The two-year agreement reflects Karnataka’s continued efforts to attract global investments while creating a wider technology talent network across the state.
That distributed model addresses two pain points multinationals routinely flag: rising costs in Bengaluru and the need for resilient, multi-location delivery footprints.
The Karnataka-Naukri.com deal arrives as India consolidates its position as the global epicenter of capability center growth, with U.S. firms increasingly relocating engineering, finance, analytics and AI operations to Indian GCCs to control costs and tap specialized talent.
State-level competition for this investment is intensifying, and Karnataka’s move to subsidize hiring at the entry point signals a new phase in how Indian states are courting the next generation of multinational tech operations.
