As H-1B Costs Soar, Some Clients Race Back to India

With the sky-high H-1B visa fee nearly cutting off their access to foreign tech talent, American firms are shifting a chunk of their business operations to India under the guise of expansion.

The latest entrant is Silicon Valley giant Google. Its parent, Alphabet Inc., has leased an office tower offering 650,000 square feet of space. The company has also struck a deal to buy or lease another under-construction project that will add more than a million square feet.

If Google takes up the entire space, the complex could seat as many as 20,000 additional employees. The company already employs more than 14,000 people in India. The scale signals long-term commitment.

Two weeks ago, AI firm Anthropic opened an office in Bangalore and promised to hire hundreds.

Other US giants are doing the same. Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix and Alphabet together hired over 32,000 people in India in 2025. That marked an 18% year-on-year rise and pushed their combined India workforce to about 214,000.

The expansion is not limited to big names. In 2025 alone, American companies set up more than 60 new Global Capability Centers in India. That is a 45% jump over 2023 and a sharp rise from the roughly 43 centres added in 2024.

Not just Because of H1B

Across the country, more than 90 new tech centres opened last year. They generated around 450,000 jobs. By year-end, India hosted nearly 1,900 GCCs. These centres employed nearly 2 million professionals and added roughly $60–76 billion in economic value.

Still, not everyone sees visa costs as the main trigger.

“I don’t believe that the high H-1B visa fee is driving US firms towards India,” said Atul Vashistha, Chairperson of Neo Group, the Miami-based global sourcing advisory firm.

“What’s driving this is the recognition that technology is changing rapidly. They have realized that to control certain things, they need to own them, and that’s what is leading them to establish their own capability centers.”

Captive GCCs give companies control. They keep intellectual property, culture and decision-making in-house. At the same time, they deliver speed and cost efficiency. That combination is exactly what American firms want.

“We are currently helping a pharma company, a global manufacturer and a CPG (retailer) to set up a captive in India,” Vashista added.

According to him, Bangalore and Hyderabad attract the large setups. Smaller operations often choose Pune, a smaller city near Mumbai, the country’s financial capital.

Companies are expanding in different ways. Some build fresh campuses from scratch. Others rapidly scale existing offices. A few buy small specialist teams to move faster.

Interestingly, a large share of India’s GCC tech workforce works for small and medium enterprises. Many mid-sized firms hire between 200 and 500 people. They use plug-and-play infrastructure to start operations quickly.

For example, cybersecurity firm Sonatype set up a center in Hyderabad. Its US peer Deepwatch launched a threat detection center in Bangalore. Industrial distributor Ferguson also established a software engineering and analytics unit.

Wall Street names such as JPMorgan Chase and retail giant Walmart quietly expanded their existing centers. They absorbed work that earlier moved through H-1B routes.

From Outsourcing Hubs to R&D Centers

Policy shifts in Washington may add to the momentum. The White House plans to overhaul the H-1B lottery system and allow entry mainly to highly paid workers. That move could have pushed smaller firms to open back offices in India, said Ana Gabriela Urizar, Immigration Lawyer at Manifest Law PLLC.

If authorities prioritize applications based on higher prevailing wages, the tilt toward senior and highly paid professionals will grow stronger. Combined with the $100,000 fee, the system could narrow the pipeline to top-tier talent. It could also make it far harder for early-career professionals and smaller employers to participate, Urizar added.

In that environment, expanding in India becomes less a reaction and more a structural alternative for sustaining access to scalable talent.

A recent study by accounting firm EY shows how the role of Indian GCCs is evolving. Over half of India centers, 52%, now share accountability in global decisions. Another 26% are formally consulted. About 20% are moving toward full ownership from India for select functions.

Until mid-2025, most US firms set up India captives to build strong talent pools in software development and analytics. That focus shifted in the second half of 2025.

During this phase, companies began building AI research units, cybersecurity product development teams and financial modelling groups in India. The centers moved up the value chain. They stopped being support arms. They started shaping core strategy.

EY Partner and GCC Sector Leader Arindam Sen said that GCCs in India have entered a new phase, evolving beyond their traditional cost-arbitrage role to create innovation arbitrage. He noted that these centers are no longer confined to single-function delivery work but are transforming into multi-functional hubs where AI, data and R&D operate alongside core functions such as IT, finance and HR.