In India's most advanced cities, American companies are competing to establish more offshore campuses. Indian experts are carrying out the functions essential to global business with a full staff office with skilled professionals.
The concentration is the strictest bits in Bengaluru. Apul Nahata, a Silicon Valley-based medical technology company that uses artificial intelligence to interpret brain scans, can look at the windows of his office, which he leads in India, and sees the “company density” associated with his work.
“If you walk half a kilometres, you can see Google, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Visa, Samsung and Amazon here,” said Nahata, who spent 10 years in California. He is particularly tailored to his technological neighbours, but JPMorgan Chase has the largest office of these offices, with 55,000 workers spreading to Bengaluru and four other Indian cities. Even national retailers such as Target and Lowe's employ between 4,000 and 5,000 Indians in Bengaluru.
Under President Trump, the United States has overturned some of its most important trading partnerships. He is particularly frustrated by the US deficit of $46 billion in commodity trade with India. Trump has also complained about undocumented Indian workers.
But Trump's policy solution – a high US tariff aimed at lowering trade barriers to India and forcing immigrants to deport anything will do to slow the evolution of the long partnership that connects American companies looking for a rich workforce pool in India.
Twenty years ago, many Americans feared that outsourcing office jobs to a low-wage economy like India would mean less work in the US. Since then, many types of jobs have moved abroad, many of which have since been automated. However, the American economy requires more skilled workers.
Many American companies are currently finding these workers in India. As of 2024, India had around 1,800 offshore company offices, owned by hundreds of foreign-based multinational companies. Most of them are Americans. India has 1.9 million people working for foreign companies, with 600,000 to 900,000 people expected to participate by 2030.
Together, India's offshore business centre won around $65 billion last year, more than the value of American imports into India. By 2030, they are expected to make more than $100 billion. Business centres have also originated in other countries, such as Mexico and Poland, but most are in India.
All of India, these foreign-owned offices are now the main driver of commercial real estate. An estimated 50 new ones have been established over the past year. What's expected is that another 100 people will participate in 2025.
This is welcome news for India, which needs 10 million new jobs every year just to curb unemployment. Even as economic growth grows greater than other large countries, the vast population of young people in India is at risk of falling behind.
These office models have existed since at least the 1990s when international companies began to flow to India attracted to the educated middle class who could work for very low wages. As the internet shortens the virtual distance between India and the US, Americans became familiar with workers accented by call centres and far-reaching tech support.
Business has changed dramatically since then. With the recovery of wages in India, these offshore subsidiaries no longer offer low value services only. They are not only a front post base, but also a full-fledged branch of the US headquarters, not to mention a temporary office that provides outsourcing of information technology services. In fact, the sector announced a cut in employment of 64,000 in 2024.
Salaries have increased over the years, but they are still around a quarter to a third of their dollar-adjusted equivalent in the US. Managers of these offices, known as the Global Capacity Centre, recognized their savings, but said that multinationals were attracted to the quality and abundance of potential workers in India.
“Will we expand to 2,000 engineers and marketing experts within a year?” shouted one executive.
Another point of the consensus on the growth of offshore centres is that Covid-19 played an important role like many other parts of office life. Pari Natarajan is the CEO and co-founder of Zinnov, a consulting company that helps establish shops in India. He has been doing this since 2002 and witnessed the greatest wave of enthusiasm that began crashing on land four years ago.
“During Covid, we realized that businesses can have teams anywhere – and people are equidistant from each other,” said Natarajan, who normally works in Manhattan.
Pure Storage is a company that manufactures data storage hardware used all over the world, and is one of the newcomers here. Co-founder John Colgrove, a Silicon Valley legend known as Coz, helped found the company in 2009 in Mountain View, California.
Pure's office in Bengaluru, located on High Church Street, has a Californian feel of technology, including open plan seating, espresso machines, acre monitors and a humming data room. Customized murals refer to Bengaluru and other India. However, the office also struggled to replicate the exact dimensions of the desk located at Silicon Valley HQ.
Ajeya Motaganahalli has been building a pure reservoir for the past three years. He is a vice president and Indians who have a “VP level” leadership job at the center are common, he said. The command chain runs all over the world, he said. The pure storage reporting line said it was moving up and down between the third centres in California, Bengaluru and Prague.
Ekroop Caur, secretary to the Karnataka government, is responsible for the growth and maintenance of Bengaluru's foreign subsidiary. One of her priorities is to help businesses find the right space and talent not only in Bengaluru but also in other cities in Karnataka.
Offshore office centers have a lot of high-tech startups like Rapidai and Pure Storage, but some venerable American companies are part of the movement.
Founded 105 years ago in Stamford, Connecticut, Pitney Bowes employs 11,000 people worldwide by the man who invented the first postal meter, most are still in the shipping business. Also, around 85% of the transportation technology workforce is located in India. Pitney Bouz began Indian operations long before the current waves and was established in the industrial city of Pune, near Noida and Mumbai, the outskirts of New Delhi.
Anisha Johar, who has been with Pitney Bowes for 10 years, works for the communications team. “I didn't think I had a global role from India,” Johar said.
American companies are assembled their workforce in India, primarily because it is becoming difficult to find the right kind of worker in the US. Research shows that while one-third of all new engineering jobs are not filled, nearly 1.2 million Indians graduate with engineering degrees each year. Low-wage American workers who have lost their jobs due to the transition of manufacturing jobs to Asia are left behind without retraining.
Deborah Kops, managing principal at Sourcing Change, has been working on this type of business since the early 1990s, especially in India.
“There's a ruthless tendency right now that companies understand that they can globalize their work,” Kops said. She tried to establish a global center in the US, but says for her staff there is no education engine.
“Can you get 5,000 people who know how to do this kind of job? You can't,” she said. “But you can do it in India and do it elsewhere in the world.”
