India may remain relatively insulated in the near term, with layoffs likely to arrive later than in Western markets, according to experts.Over the past 18 months, companies including Meta, Oracle, Intel, Amazon, Cisco, Intuit and SAP have collectively cut hundreds of thousands of roles globally. The layoffs have disproportionately impacted high-cost markets such as the US.“Layoffs have accelerated a shift that was already underway – a redistribution of tech work globally. India is emerging as a key beneficiary, not just because of cost, but depth of engineering talent and growing innovation capability,” Ganesh S Padmanabhan, VP – Recruitment Business at CIEL HR, said.Today, companies are looking for talent models that offer both quality and scale, a requirement that India fits, he said. The ability to build large, skilled teams here while enabling round-the-clock delivery makes India a compelling option in a cost-conscious environment.According to Neeti Sharma, CEO, TeamLease Digital, India’s GCCs will add about 4.5 lakh jobs this year alone, making this the most aggressive expansion the sector has seen. The country now hosts over 1,850 GCCs employing over 2 million professionals. While redundant roles are cut globally, capability centres are built in India.“For many GCCs, the research, product development, and global leadership have started moving to India. The question many ask is not ‘how much can we offshore?’, but ‘what can India lead?’ Engineering, AI, and product execution are increasingly India-owned. Strategic decisions may still sit at global HQ, but operational gravity has moved,” she shared.Cheap labourFor two decades, global companies sent large volumes of routine technology work, coding, testing, support, and back-office operations to India because skilled people are available at a fraction of the cost, explained Sidhant Rastogi, President of Zinnov.A senior engineer who costs $150,000–180,000 in the US costs $40,000–50,000 in India for similar output, with all-in cost per head in an Indian centre around $25,000 a year. Removing one expensive Western seat saves what three or four Indian seats do, so cost-led cuts fall on the expensive country first, he said.While the old model rewarded headcount, the new one is AI-led. Software and data now do much of that routine work, so the same output needs far fewer people. Value no longer comes from how many people, but from products, the IP, the high-end AI engineering, and the product leadership.Rastogi highlighted that India sits between the two. “It is the biggest winner of the old model and one of the most exposed to the new one. Large numbers of people doing routine work cheaply is what AI compresses. So, the layoffs are not a Western problem that India avoids, but a global reset that it is part of, maybe with a cushioned and delayed impact.”The real question is whether India can move up to higher value work faster than AI removes the routine work at the bottom, he said.Padmanabhan echoed this, adding that the “hire in India, cut elsewhere” model will hold only up to a point. If it remains purely cost-driven, it won’t be sustainable, especially with AI reducing the need for lower-end work globally.Quality over quantityRastogi highlighted that by mid-May 2026, over 113,000 tech jobs had gone across 179 companies, running about a third faster than a year earlier. India is not unaffected. Oracle’s late-March round had 12,000 of its 30,000 global cuts in India. TCS lost nearly 24,000 people in FY26. Even Infosys trimmed its base, letting go of trainees and junior staff through 2025. The same wave that pushed Intel to cut 24,000–27,000 roles globally is touching Indian payrolls too.On the other hand, Zinnov’s India GCC Report (FY26) counts 2,117 GCCs in India, a $98.4 billion market employing 2.36 million people, now the world’s largest AI hiring market. Senior global leadership roles run from India, growing about 40 per cent a year, past 6,500 in 2024, and on track to cross 30,000 by 2030.While the centre of gravity is moving gradually from the US to India, the right way to measure it is in decision ownership and IP, not the number of people. India is gaining more control without necessarily gaining people in the same proportion.“AI is strongest at the routine, repeatable work that used to sit at the base of Indian centres and services firms, so far fewer junior hours are needed for the same output. The jobs moving to India are more senior and more valuable than ever. The jobs that are shrinking in India and everywhere are the routine ones at the bottom. India is winning better work and a thinner pyramid at the same time,” Rastogi explained.Published on May 21, 2026