As organisations around the world observe World Environment Day and reflect on their sustainability commitments, attention is increasingly turning to how environmental goals are translated into everyday business decisions. Beyond renewable energy targets, emissions disclosures, and climate pledges, some of the most meaningful sustainability interventions begin much closer to the ground, in the workplaces where people spend a significant part of their day. Increasingly, businesses are recognizing that the design and operation of workplaces can play a critical role in reducing environmental impact and advancing broader ESG objectives.
In this article, Suhas Kulkarni, Senior Associate Director – Real Estate at Embark, examines how India's Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are leading this transition. He highlights how decisions around location, building design, employee transportation, and day-to-day operations are helping GCCs reduce their environmental footprint while supporting broader business and talent objectives. The piece offers valuable insights into how sustainable workplaces are becoming an integral part of the GCC growth story in India.
India's Global Capability Centres (GCCs) story is being rewritten, and sustainability is at the centre of it. What once played out as a cost and talent narrative is quietly evolving into something more ambitious. These centres are now transforming into strategic hubs leading global Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives. Nearly 85% of GCCs in India target carbon neutrality by 2030, acting as central innovation engines that manage compliance, carbon disclosures, and sustainable supply chains for multinational parent companies
India is home to over 2,117 GCCs today, employing 2.36 million people, with projections pointing to 3 million by 2030. As these centres grow, not just in headcount but in strategic importance to their global parent organizations, the workspace has quietly become one of the most consequential sustainability decisions a company makes on the ground.
The workspace as a sustainability lever
Historically corporate sustainability in India was treated as a compliance exercise, i.e., ticking the boxes on green building certifications and reporting numbers upstream to global headquarters. That is changing.
Growing GCCs are beginning to understand that the workplace touches nearly every dimension of their environmental footprint from the buildings they occupy and the energy they consume daily to water usage and employee commuting patterns. Each of these is measurable, feeds into global carbon reporting, and presents an opportunity to drive meaningful impact.
The shift in thinking is significant. Sustainability is no longer a layer added on top of workspace decisions; it is increasingly embedded into them from the start.
It begins with location
The most consequential sustainability decision a GCC makes is often the first one: where to set up. A building's proximity to public transport, access to renewable power, and green building certification status are foundational considerations.
Green building certifications such as LEED and IGBC, alongside wellness certifications like WELL, have moved from being differentiators to baseline expectations. Beyond the certificate itself, what matters is what it represents: reduced energy consumption, better air quality, lower water consumption, and buildings designed to perform efficiently over the long term.
In fact, for developers and landlords, sustainability in evolved markets can sometimes mean refurbishing older buildings rather than redeveloping, integrating eco-friendly practices to improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon footprint, and minimizing construction waste.
Over the last five years, more than 80% of all new Grade A supply has been green certified. Likewise, occupier demand trends have indicated more than 80-85% of all new transactions in green buildings. With close to 40% of Grade A commercial real estate in India now institutionally owned, Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) frameworks are a strategic necessity built into property acquisition, development & management. For example, amongst the most prominent REITs in the country has a clear 2040 net carbon zero emissions goal across its portfolio with a commitment to source a minimum of 75% of its energy from renewable sources, powered by a massive operational solar park.
Building out responsibly
Once a location is chosen, the interior fit-out becomes the next major sustainability touchpoint. The materials selected, certifications pursued, and design choices made around energy use and spatial efficiency all carry a measurable carbon footprint.
Gold and platinum-rated interior certifications are increasingly being pursued because they generate measurable carbon data that global headquarters can incorporate into sustainability disclosures. For multinationals with ambitious net-zero commitments, this matters.
Green vendors form a major link to a sustainable build out. Some of the largest office furniture suppliers have established sustainability goals targeting its entire portfolio. Notable brands (including global and regional names) have defined sustainability objectives including 50% of more sourcing from recycled content, cutting greenhouse gas emissions to less than half, reducing supply chain emissions, elimination of single use plastics in manufacturing / packaging and achieving zero landfill waste.
The commute problem
If building selection and fit-out are the headline sustainability decisions, employee commute is the quiet one that often undoes much of the good work done elsewhere. In Indian cities, where public transport infrastructure varies significantly and road congestion is a daily reality, employee transport can represent a substantial and frequently overlooked portion of a GCC's operational carbon footprint.
The most forward-thinking GCCs are addressing this directly. Fully electric vehicle fleets for employee transport, thoughtfully integrated with available public transport networks, are emerging as a practical and impactful approach. The goal is not to replace the bus or the metro. It is to fill the gaps intelligently, reduce dependency on personal vehicles, and do so in a way that employees find convenient.
In reality, today only about 20-30% of all fleets adopted by corporates are EV. The adoption curve and transition to a larger EV fleet is a journey in itself. The pace of adoption will be driven by a number of factors including government policies, infrastructure ramp-up, global supply chain and the overall cost of adoption.
This matters beyond carbon arithmetic. For the incoming Gen Z workforce, commute experience ranks alongside compensation and culture as a workplace priority. Designing a sustainable transport model is therefore simultaneously a sustainability intervention and a talent strategy.
Sustainability beyond infrastructure
What sustainability actually looks like inside a GCC also extends beyond infrastructure. As workforces grow, organizations are embedding sustainability into workplace culture through responsible resource management, employee awareness initiatives, and data-driven operational practices.
Common everyday practices can go a long way in determining workplace sustainability. Some of the simplest and most effective operating practices include:
- Switching to smart lighting & motion sensors
- Use of energy efficient appliances
- Elimination of single use plastics from all consumables
- Digitization of records and reducing reliance on paper
- Water conversation by using touchless aerators and low flow faucets
- Dedicated green teams identified in the employee workforce
- In-house composting of wet waste
Where global standards meet local realities
One of the biggest challenges in GCC sustainability is adapting global frameworks to local realities. Sustainability strategies designed for western cities often need to be recalibrated for Indian cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, or Chennai, where commute patterns, infrastructure, climate, and energy availability differ significantly.
The GCCs that are getting this right are those that treat sustainability not as a global mandate to be implemented locally, but as a local challenge to be solved in ways that support global goals.
For India's GCCs, sustainability is becoming less about standalone initiatives and more about a series of interconnected workplace decisions. The buildings they occupy, the resources they consume, the commute options they provide, and the experiences they create for employees collectively determine whether sustainability is simply an ambition or an operational reality.
That is what sustainability increasingly looks like inside a growing GCC in India: not a single program, but a workplace ecosystem designed to deliver measurable environmental impact at scale.
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