Kerala Wants 150 Global Capability Centres by 2031. Where Kochi Fits

Kerala's three government IT parks spent late July selling one number. The state has 45 operational global capability centres today. The target is 150 by 2031, with two lakh jobs attached to them. That figure went on record at the Kerala GCC Outlook 2026 conclave, held at Travancore Hall in Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram on 21 July 2026, where a feasibility study prepared by the Bengaluru firm ANSR was released.

Thiruvananthapuram hosted the event. Kochi has to deliver a large share of the target. Infopark at Kakkanad is the central-region campus in that three-park structure, alongside Technopark in the capital and Cyberpark in Kozhikode, and the day's most concrete outcome for this city was an agreement signed between Infoparks Kerala and ANSR.

What is a GCC, and how is it different from the IT jobs already here?

A global capability centre is a multinational's own office in India, staffed by its own employees, doing work for the parent company rather than for outside clients. That sounds like a technicality. It is not.

• The services model: an Indian firm wins a contract from a foreign company and staffs it. At renewal, the client can move that contract to a cheaper vendor in another city or another country.
• The GCC model: the foreign company signs the lease itself, hires the people onto its own payroll and owns the output. Walking away means closing a subsidiary, not switching a supplier.
• Why states compete for them: the work sits closer to the product and the centre is harder to move. Karnataka has talked about doubling its centres to 1,000 by 2029, Gujarat has a GCC policy running to 2030, and Telangana's IT minister is targeting the establishment of 100 centres in 2026.

What was actually announced on 21 July?

Around the report launch the government also set out a 100-day mission, with investment promotion work pulled under a single brand, Future Corporation. It runs on an international investment drive, roadshows, infrastructure expansion and an upskilling programme through the ICT Academy of Kerala and the Digital University of Kerala, with artificial intelligence, semiconductor design and deep technology named as the focus areas. A Kerala GCC Conclave and a residential GCC summit are planned as follow-ups.

Where does Kochi actually stand right now?

Infopark Kochi opened in July 2004 and runs across 323 acres in two phases. On the most recent published figures it holds about 580 companies and somewhere between 70,000 and 72,000 people, and Phase II is designed to carry employment past a lakh once it is fully built out. That base is the reason the state can talk about tripling its GCC count at all, and it is why the land question behind Infopark's third phase and the proposed AI city matters more than it looks.

What the campus offers a multinational is a workforce that already exists in a city where an engineer can still live near the office, which is a large part of what the state is selling, alongside lower attrition and the diaspora network. What it lacks is the depth of an older hub, and this is an assessment rather than a statistic: fewer people here have already run a centre of that size, and the rental market is shallow enough that two large tenants moving at once is felt straight away. Anyone weighing the move should read the honest version of daily life in the Kakkanad tech belt first.

What should a Kochi jobseeker take from this?

Be interested, not excited. A target is not a hiring plan, and a memorandum of understanding is not a lease. The headline number has also moved around: a Vision 2031 document released in October 2025 put the goal at 120 centres, an industries and commerce document has cited 200 by the same year, and the July report settled on 150. The jobs figure, two lakh, has stayed the same in the versions that carry one.

Which makes the boring signals more useful than the announcements:

• Office space actually leased at Infopark or SmartCity, rather than floated as a proposal.
• Job postings that name the parent company as the employer instead of a staffing vendor.
• Roles beyond support and maintenance: product, data, design, finance operations.
• Whether the ICT Academy and Digital University programmes end up with named hiring partners, or stay as course catalogues.

The opportunity is real and Kochi is the natural home for a good part of it. Follow-through, not ambition, has historically been the weak half. If you sell into these campuses, from cloud kitchens to co-working, the existing tenants are listed in our Kochi business directory, and we follow the sector in Tech and AI.