December 2025
KEY FINDINGS AT A GLANCE
✓ GCCs Dominate: 160,000jobs added - 4X faster than IT services
✓ AI/ML Talent Crunch: 1million shortage expected by 2027
✓ Hyderabad Leads: 46%of new GCCs, displacing Bengaluru
✓ Startup Recovery: 32%hiring surge despite 23% funding decline
✓ Compensation Surge: Gen AI roles commanding 15-20% premiums
India's technology hiring landscape in 2025 is undergoing a fundamental transformation, marked by the dramatic rise of Global Capability Centers (GCCs) as the dominant force in high-skill job creation. This comprehensive analysis, combining market-wide research with Zyoin Group's proprietary insights from successfully closing over 100,000 roles across a 3-million-strong talent network, reveals three distinct hiring engines operating at vastly different speeds.
The Central Finding: GCCs are adding jobs 4 times faster than IT services, with an estimated 160,000 new tech roles in FY25, while IT services net additions remain muted at25,000-40,000 positions, and startup hiring, though rebounding with a 32%year-on-year surge, stays constrained by a 23% funding decline.
India's tech hiring market in 2025 is characterized by three distinct segments, each with fundamentally different business models, growth trajectories, and talent strategies. The following chart illustrates the stark difference in hiring growth rates:
Net Jobs Created:
India faces a severe and worsening AI/ML talent shortage that will fundamentally shape hiring strategy, compensation structures, and organizational capabilities through 2027. This crisis cuts across all three segments but manifests differently based on scale and strategic importance:
Key Statistics:
• Current Supply: 416,000 skilled AI/ML professionals
• Current Demand: 850,000+ (supply meets only 49%)
• 2027 Projected Need: 1.25 million professionals
• Shortage Gap: Over 1 million skilled workers
• Compensation Response: 15-20% premiums for GenAI roles vs traditional AI/ML
• GCC Market Share: 22.5% of India's total AI/ML hiring demand
The composition of roles being hired reveals fundamentally different business models and strategic priorities across the three segments. This analysis, combining Zyoin's frontline placement data with industry-wide trends, shows a clear divergence in role mix:
Key Characteristics:
• AI/ML & GenAI: 18% of hiring, up 300% YoY -highest priority
• Product Engineering: 24% - building global products, not servicing clients
• Cloud/DevOps: 20% - enterprise multi-cloud strategy
• Data Engineering: 20% - foundation for AI/ML initiatives
Key Observations:
• Traditional Pillars: App Development (30%) and Testing/QA (22%) still dominate
• AI/ML Surge: 7.5% but growing 39% YoY -fastest-growing segment
• Quality Evolution: Testing increasingly automation-focused and AI-assisted
• Cloud Migration: 16% Cloud/DevOps roles, skewing toward cloud-native architectures
Startup Hiring Philosophy:
• Core Builders: 32.5% Full-Stack/Backend engineers who can work across the stack
• AI/ML Premium: 12.5% - outsized relative to traditional app dev, drives differentiation
• Product-Centric: IT job share nearly doubled to45%, Product Mgmt 8.5%
• Minimal QA: Significantly lower than GCCs or IT Services - capital efficiency focus
One of the most significant structural shifts in 2025 is the geographic rebalancing of tech hiring, with Hyderabad displacing Bengaluru as India's top GCC destination and Tier-2 cities experiencing explosive growth:
Drivers of Hyderabad's Rise:
• Cost Advantage: 15-30% lower salaries and office rent than Bengaluru
• Specialization Clusters: 355 GCCs creating deep expertise in AI/ML, cybersecurity, fintech, healthcare
• AI/ML Hub: 14-16% of India's AI/ML hiring demand concentrated in Hyderabad
• Recent Launches: Vanguard, Eli Lilly, Costco, McDonald's, Heineken all chose Hyderabad
• Tier-1 Stability: Bengaluru (23%), Hyderabad(21%), Mumbai (22%), Chennai (18%) remain strong
• Tier-2 Explosion: Coimbatore leading at 24%,followed by Ahmedabad 21%
• Emerging Hubs: Jaipur, Indore, Kochi, Bhubaneswar, Lucknow seeing rapid establishment
• GCC Strategy: 40% now hiring in Tier-2/3 (up from 0% a few years ago)
Hiring preferences across experience levels reveal a structural shift away from freshers toward mid-career professionals across all three segments, with each having distinct motivations:
Segment-Specific Patterns:
• GCCs: 65% mid-career focus - value-driven hiring for high-performance teams; 20% senior for leadership
• IT Services: 50% mid-career, 15% freshers recovering after subdued 2024; 35% senior for client management
• Startups: Fresher hiring declined from 53% to41%; prioritizing operational depth over training costs
• Market Message: 'Productivity-ready talent' commanding premium across all segments
In a market where 80% of employers report difficulty finding skilled talent and 84% of IT sector employers specifically struggle with recruitment, Zyoin Group has developed proprietary AI-augmented evaluation frameworks that deliver measurable performance advantages:
Zyoin's Competitive Advantages:
Production-Grade Assessment: Goes beyond resume screening to assess real-world ML competency, recommendation systems, A/B testing
Scale & Network: 3 million talent network,100,000+ successful placements, 1,000+ global clients
Segment Expertise: Deep experience across all three segments - GCCs, IT Services, Startups
Geographic Coverage: Strong recruiter networks in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and emerging Tier-2 cities
Service Portfolio: End-to-end GCC setup, leadership hiring, RPO, embedded recruiters, investor advisory
• Priority #1: Invest heavily in AI/ML skills - 300% demand growth, 15-20% compensation premiums
• Target GCCs: Best combination of growth trajectory (22.5%), stability, compensation, and career advancement
• Geographic Flexibility: Hyderabad and Tier-2cities offer lower competition, better quality of life, comparable opportunities
• Experience Sweet Spot: 4-10 years experience commanding 50-65% of hiring across all segments
• For Freshers: IT services still offer best volumes (TCS 42K, Capgemini 40K+); build strong portfolios for startups
• Talent Competition: GCCs setting new benchmarks in compensation and EVP - IT services must differentiate on learning, diversity of projects
• Geographic Imperative: Tier-2/3 expansion no longer optional - 40% of GCCs already diversified beyond metros
• AI/ML Urgency: Lock in talent before premiums increase further; partner with assessment platforms like Zyoin for production-grade evaluation
• Retention Focus: Comprehensive EVP essential -37% of GCCs monitoring new hire quality to prevent infant attrition
• Hybrid Flexibility: Clear flexibility policies drive 27% higher application rates - workplace clarity is strategic necessity
India's 2025 tech hiring landscape is a study in structural transformation. GCCs are consolidating their position as the primary engine of high-skill job creation, attracting the best engineering talent with premium compensation, global exposure, and product-building opportunities. IT services remain the largest employer but are shedding volume in favor of quality and specialization. Startups, starved of capital, are hiring with surgical precision, building lean teams of deeply skilled generalists.
THE BOTTOM LINE
For Zyoin Group, these dynamics validate its strategic positioning as a hybrid AI + human expertise partner. In a market where 80% of employers report difficulty finding skilled talent, the ability to source fast(70% faster shortlisting, <7 day time-to-hire), assess deep technical competency (production-grade ML, enterprise architecture), and maintain deep relationships across GCCs, startups, and IT services is a meaningful competitive advantage.
The next 12-18 months will be decisive for talent acquisition strategy in India: GCC leaders must lock in talent before AI/ML salaries increase further; IT services must accelerate their pivot to higher-value delivery and upskilling; and startups must position themselves as the best place to build AI-first products in an increasingly competitive market.
This report synthesizes data from:
NASSCOM Annual Strategic Review & Future of Work Report 2024-2025
Zinnov GCC Reports: Salary, Attrition & Hiring Trends 2024-2025
Found it Insights Tracker 2025 (Annual & Monthly Reports)
Zyoin Group proprietary placement data (100,000+ roles,3M talent network)
Business Standard, Economic Times, India Briefing industry coverage
World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025
Taggd, V3Staffing, Quess Corp market intelligence reports
Primary research across 1,900+ GCCs, 100+ IT services firms, 500+ startups
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Prepared by Zyoin Group
India's Leading AI-Augmented Talent Advisory
Serving 1,000+ Global Clients | 3M Talent Network | 100K+ Successful Placements
