Inside Smartworks’ Campus Play for India’s GCC Boom

• ByStartupStory     |    December 5, 2025

A closer look at how Neetish Sarda’s campus-first blueprint has become the unexpected backbone of India’s fast-accelerating GCC landscape.

Something curious has been happening in India’s corporate corridors.Not loud. Not headline-friendly. But steady. The kind of shift you only notice when you zoom out far enough.

For years, Global Capability Centres (GCCs) were treated like just another vertical in India’s services ecosystem. Useful, predictable, unglamorous. Then the numbers started behaving differently. Growth didn’t just rise; it tilted. The count that hovered around 1,000–1,200 GCCs suddenly pushed toward 1,700, and projections that once felt optimistic now point almost casually to 2,300 by 2030. Alongside it, a sector moving toward $110 billion in value.

What’s less spoken about is the ripple this growth has created inside the office market. Because GCCs aren’t expanding politely. They’re expanding with scale, speed, and a very specific playbook: whole-building control, repeatable campuses, cross-city uniformity, and a global-standard experience that must land in India without the global price tag. That’s where the market cracks. Most landlords weren’t built for this pace. Most flex players weren’t built for this size.

Smartworks a homegrown player that rewrote the managed office playbook with Indian sensibilities focussed on value-centricity. Not loudly. Not with glossy jargon. But with a footprint that quietly stretches across 14 million sq. ft., 14 cities, and 760+ enterprises. A footprint stitched together through entire-building leases, fast-turnaround delivery, and campuses that behave less like flex centres and more like operating systems.

GCCs have noticed. They now account for 15% of Smartworks’ rental revenue — a number rising faster than the company’s early years ever anticipated. The design of the model explains why. A GCC ramping from 300 to 3,000 seats does not want a floor. It wants certainty. One contract. One execution handshake. One compliance wrapper. One campus blueprint mirrored across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, and NCR. And delivered fast, in 45–60 days, not the nine-month slog that traditional setups still demand.

Smartworks built around that gap before the gap became visible. Positioned as a dedicated GCC offering, SmartVantage packages the things GCCs usually chase separately , custom-built workspaces,  compliance, plug-and-play tech, and a curated partner stack for everything from hiring and payroll to legal, tax, and local operating support. Instead of juggling five vendors, a GCC gets one platform for all needs.

And while the industry debates whether flex is the future or just a cycle, Smartworks runs a financial profile that looks sturdier than the debate itself- 21% year-on-year revenue growth, 46% EBITDA expansion, and a negative net-debt position, all while scaling across India at speed. The more interesting metric is buried deeper. Clients with 1,000+ seats now drive 35% of Smartworks’ revenue. The campus-first model isn’t an aspiration. It’s already the demand centre.

So, the question that should be asked isn’t whether India will hit 2,300 GCCs. It’s who has the operating capacity to absorb them without stalling, diluting, or breaking under their own growth. Smartworks didn’t create the GCC boom. The managed campus model pioneer built the infrastructure the boom now runs on.

Follow Startup Story