Foreign banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) firms have overtaken technology companies as the biggest driver of office demand for global capability centres (GCCs) in India, with their gross leasing hitting a record 7.32 million sq ft in the January-June 2026 period, according to a Knight Frank India report released in late August 2026.
Over the same six months, leasing by foreign IT-ITeS companies setting up GCCs fell 28% to 4.13 million sq ft, down from 5.71 million sq ft a year earlier. The BFSI sector accounted for 36% of the overall 20.6 million sq ft of GCC leasing across the leading eight cities: Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. Leasing by other service companies also rose to 5.10 million sq ft from 4.41 million sq ft.
The consultancy framed the shift as structural rather than cyclical. “India’s commercial real estate market is witnessing a clear structural shift, with GCC-led demand becoming increasingly diversified beyond traditional technology occupiers,” said Viral Desai, Senior Executive Director, Knight Frank India, noting a 70% year-on-year surge in BFSI-led GCC transactions.
The data lands amid a broader diversification of GCC demand in India, where banking, insurance and financial-services firms are expanding risk, compliance, digital-banking and fintech functions out of Indian hubs. For HR and talent teams, the read-through is direct: hiring momentum in GCCs is rotating toward BFSI-specific skill sets, from quantitative risk and regulatory reporting to fraud analytics and core-banking technology. Whether the IT-ITeS dip is a temporary reset or a longer stabilisation is the open question.
