09 - 10 - 2026

Bengaluru’s IT kingdom gets new tentants: GCCs

Bengaluru, long accustomed to being introduced as India’s IT capital, is discovering that even kings can lose a little of their territory without losing their crown. The city’s office market is undergoing a quiet but consequential change: traditional IT and IT-enabled services are yielding ground to Global Capability Centres (GCCs), the new engines of corporate real estate demand.

According to Brigade Group Chairman M R Jaishankar, IT and ITES accounted for nearly 65 per cent of Bengaluru’s office absorption a decade ago. Their share has since fallen to around 30 per cent. The office buildings remain, the glass facades still gleam, and the lifts continue their daily journeys skywards. What has changed is the identity of the people paying the rent.

The GCCs of multinational corporations are increasingly occupying centre stage. These are no longer merely offices where paperwork goes to acquire an Indian accent. They are centres for technology, product development, research, engineering and other high-value operations. The back office, it appears, has acquired a front-row seat.

AI Impact

There is, of course, another character in this unfolding drama: artificial intelligence. It has inspired breathless predictions about disappearing jobs, shrinking workforces and offices destined to become expensive museums of the pre-automation age.

Jaishankar, however, offered a more measured assessment. While GCCs have indicated that AI could enable them to hire fewer people in the future by improving productivity, he said Brigade had not yet witnessed companies surrendering office space because of AI-led efficiencies.

The distinction matters. A company may employ fewer people to perform a task, but that does not automatically mean it needs fewer square feet. The relationship between human beings, machines and commercial property is not always as straightforward as a consultant’s PowerPoint presentation might suggest.

The numbers, meanwhile, offer Bengaluru’s landlords some comfort.

The city absorbed around 20-22 million square feet of office space in the previous calendar year, Jaishankar said. About 16 million square feet had already been absorbed in the first three quarters of 2026. He expects full-year absorption to reach around 20-21 million square feet.

For a market supposedly staring into the abyss of technological disruption, that is hardly evidence of an office exodus.

More importantly, the changing composition of demand could make Bengaluru less vulnerable to fluctuations in traditional IT hiring. The city’s commercial property story is no longer dependent on a single industry behaving itself.

Brigade, which has around 10 million square feet of commercial development at various stages of construction, remains confident about the market’s long-term prospects.

The group, marking 40 years of operations, is also looking at opportunities beyond conventional office and residential development. Data centres are one such possibility. Jaishankar said demand in the segment was substantial, though Brigade was not yet active in the business and would consider entering it if the right opportunity arose.

There is a certain irony here. The machines that may eventually reduce the number of people required in some offices are themselves creating demand for vast facilities to house the infrastructure behind them. Artificial intelligence may be clever, but it still needs somewhere to live.

For Bengaluru, the lesson is that cities, like successful businesses, survive by changing their clientele. The IT boom built much of its modern identity. GCCs are now reshaping its next chapter, bringing new kinds of work, investment and demand for commercial space.

The city’s office towers are not disappearing. They are simply changing tenants. And in real estate, as in life, the landlord is generally less interested in the name on the door than in whether the rent arrives on time.

By B D Narayankar

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