India remains the most extensively leveraged location globally for delivering a wide range of services. Its vast and diverse talent pool, strong cost competitiveness, and supportive operating business environment drive this leadership. The country continues to serve as a strategic offshore partner for major markets, including the US, the UK, and Europe, enabled by a talent ecosystem aligned to follow-the-sun delivery models. Beyond transactional work, India is increasingly delivering complex services, with engineering research and development, product engineering, and digital services including AI, ML, and cybersecurity, emerging as key growth areas. Tier-1 locations, including Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Pune, account for ~80% of the overall services market in India. However, owing to increasing cost and margin pressures, rising attrition levels, and intensifying competition, organizations are actively exploring tier-2 and tier-3 cities. This shift is enabling them to access an untapped talent pool at lower attrition levels and operating costs, while also mitigating concentration risks in tier-1 cities. This report will support market providers in their quest to support the right service from the right location within India. It highlights the relative attractiveness and value proposition of key tier-1/2/3 cities for supporting services delivery, based on a multi-faceted assessment.

Technology services have emerged as the backbone of modern enterprises and providers, powering customer engagement, operational agility, and competitive differentiation. As organizations fast-track their digital transformation journeys, the rapid adoption of technologies such as AI, generative AI, ML, blockchain, cybersecurity, and AR/VR continues to reshape industries across the board. The demand for technology-led R&D and innovation is rising sharply, with enterprises, global capability centers, and providers increasingly embedding digital capabilities into their service delivery models. In this fast-evolving landscape, organizations must proactively scale digital solutions to stay ahead of market disruptions and meet growing customer expectations. To remain competitive and future-ready, businesses will need to revisit and refine their location strategies, building delivery portfolios that align with their digital transformation goals. This Everest Group handbook is designed to support organizations in identifying the right global locations to deliver technology services. It presents a comprehensive and multi-dimensional analysis of the relative attractiveness of leading delivery destinations worldwide. At an overall level, this handbook covers the technology services delivery attractiveness on three broad dimensions: • Talent pulse: an assessment of market maturity, entry, and experienced talent-related attributes for technology services • Financial attractiveness: an assessment of the financial attractiveness of locations from an operating cost perspective for delivery of technology services • Enablers: an assessment of enabling drivers, such as infrastructure and digital readiness, essential for technology services delivery

In July 2025, the US Senate introduced the bipartisan Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025 bill. Although still pending, the bill signals a potentially significant policy shift designed to limit the offshoring of US call center jobs. The legislation would apply to any company operating call centers with 50 or more employees, linking access to federal benefits with maintaining domestic operations. It would also mandate greater transparency when customer service work is delivered from offshore locations. If enacted, the Act could reshape global delivery strategies for customer experience services by raising the cost of offshoring and introducing new compliance burdens for US-based enterprises. Global services firms with sizable offshore delivery portfolios – particularly in India, the Philippines, and nearshore hubs – may face business continuity risks, client scrutiny, and contract renegotiations. Conversely, the legislation could stimulate greater onshore investment in the US, altering the global services delivery mix. This Risk Radar analyzes the legislative context, potential business implications, and considerations for global services firms as they monitor developments around this bill.

Europe continues to be a strategic hub for global technology services delivery due to its strong technology talent ecosystem, multilingual workforce, and mature digital infrastructure. These strengths make Europe an attractive destination for delivering complex, high-value technology services, despite rising costs and saturation in several tier-1 cities. As demand remains steady in tier-1 locations, global organizations are increasingly exploring tier-2/3 cities as emerging technology hubs. These cities offer moderate cost savings, access to an untapped talent pool, and a steady university graduate base. Improvements in infrastructure and enhanced business environment boost the region’s viability for global delivery. Additionally, tier-2/3 cities serve as strategic spoke locations for business continuity, offering lower competition and supporting risk diversification beyond overleveraged tier-1 hubs. This Everest Group report helps global organizations identify the right European locations to support and drive technology services delivery. It highlights the relative attractiveness of key tier-1 and tier-2/3 locations for supporting technology services using a holistic and multi-faceted assessment.

The global services market registered modest growth in 2024, with revenue increasing by 2-4% to approximately US$290 billion. This growth marked a continued deceleration from the strong post-COVID-19 rebound, driving an approximately 12% surge in global services delivery revenue in 2022. Growth slowed further in 2023, with revenue rising by only 3-5%. Moreover, the global services market saw a marginal increase in headcount in 2024, with roughly 200,000 FTEs added to the workforce across regions. In this Global Locations State of the Market Report 2025, we analyze the global services locations landscape, evaluate developments, and assess key trends to design an optimal locations portfolio strategy. The Key Trends report in this analysis examines global locations and the center landscape, adoption trends from 2024, and leaders’ priorities for building a successful location mix in 2025. The report also analyzes headcount and revenue growth trends in the global services market at geographic/regional levels. It includes a breakdown of new center setups by geography and function, including IT application development and maintenance, IT infrastructure, engineering, R&D, contact center operations, and non-voice business services.

In the current outsourcing climate, offshoring has seen a significant uptick and sourcing and vendor management leaders are speedily changing their strategies for global location selection. Designing an optimal locations mix is critical today to balance talent availability, supply risk, and costs. Watch Everest Group’s experts as they broke down the latest market dynamics, explored shoring strategies, and uncovered the opportunities hidden in emerging locations. Whether you’re looking to diversify your delivery mix to eliminate concentration risks or optimize your sourcing portfolio for talent availability, this webinar will equip you with the strategic insights needed to refine your location strategy and maintain a competitive edge. What questions did the webinar answer? What are the key considerations for sourcing leaders to optimize their outsourcing locations selection framework? Going into 2025, what location-related developments and trends should be on your radar? How can sourcing and VMO leaders create a future-ready shoring model?

Risk Watch 2025: Preparing for Business and Operational Uncertainties is our flagship Locations State of the Market report. It interprets developments and trends related to global service locations to help businesses design a location portfolio strategy. The Locations report is divided into three sections: Key Trends Shaping the Landscape, Risk Watch, and Locations PEAK Matrix®. It provides insights into market size and growth, global services exports by region and country, location activity by region and country, and trends affecting global locations. Additionally, the report offers industry-leading comparison and analyzes key changes in the maturity, arbitrage, stability, and potential of global delivery locations (cities) through Locations PEAK Matrix®. The Risk Watch section dives into operating and business environment across key delivery locations worldwide and select source geographies. This section also highlights business and operating environment outlook across geographies, which should be on the global services leaders’ radar.

Everest Group’s Location Spotlight reports provide a crisp, insightful assessment of established and emerging/next-wave global services delivery locations by country and city. The reports help global sourcing practitioners or location strategy professionals stay ahead of the competition in understanding key market dynamics and the related opportunities each location presents. Scope Our report on Bulgaria offers data-backed research to understand the market’s attractiveness in terms of: Key drivers, challenges, and untapped opportunities for the global sourcing industry Talent and skills availability (at both entry and experienced levels) Depth and maturity across functions Financial attractiveness (including wage inflation and attrition) Enterprises and providers’ delivery presence Key languages supported Key operating and business environment risks (such as macroeconomic, geopolitical, infrastructure, safety and security, and legal and regulatory) Location Spotlight, combined with other reports in Everest Group’s Locations Insider™ subscription, makes for the industry’s most comprehensive resource on location trends and perspectives. The Locations Insider™ subscription provides up-to-date and actionable insights on which enterprises can base their location decisions and strategies. Membership(s) Locations Insider™ Sourcing and Vendor Management

Everest Group’s Location Spotlight reports provide a crisp, insightful assessment of established and emerging/next-wave global services delivery locations by country and city. The reports help global sourcing practitioners or location strategy professionals stay ahead of the competition in understanding key market dynamics and the related opportunities each location presents. Our report on Cebu City, Philippines offers data-backed research to understand the market’s attractiveness in terms of: Key drivers, challenges, and untapped opportunities for the global sourcing industry Talent and skills availability (at both entry and experienced levels) Depth and maturity across functions Financial attractiveness (including wage inflation and attrition) Enterprises and providers’ delivery presence Key languages supported Key operating and business environment risks (such as macroeconomic, geopolitical, infrastructure, safety and security, and legal and regulatory) Location Spotlight, combined with other reports in Everest Group’s Locations Insider™ subscription, makes for the industry’s most comprehensive resource on location trends and perspectives. The Locations Insider™ subscription provides up-to-date and actionable insights on which enterprises can base their location decisions and strategies. Membership(s) Locations Insider™ Sourcing and Vendor Management

Everest Group’s Location Spotlight reports provide a crisp, insightful assessment of established and emerging/next-wave global services delivery locations by country and city. The reports help global sourcing practitioners or location strategy professionals stay ahead of competition in understanding key market dynamics and the related opportunities each location presents. Our report on Kolkata, India offers data-backed research to understand the market’s attractiveness in terms of: Key drivers, challenges, and untapped opportunities for the global sourcing industry Talent and skills availability (at both entry and experienced levels) Depth and maturity across functions Financial attractiveness (including wage inflation and attrition) Delivery presence of enterprises and providers Key languages supported Key environment risks (such as macroeconomic, geopolitical, infrastructure, safety and security, and legal and regulatory) Location Spotlight, combined with other reports in Everest Group’s Locations Insider™ subscription, makes for the industry’s most comprehensive resource on location trends and perspectives. The Locations Insider™ subscription provides up-to-date and actionable insights on which enterprises can base their location decisions and strategies. Membership(s) Locations Insider™ Sourcing and Vendor Management