India remains the world’s leading recipient of shared services centre (SSC) projects, but Poland is emerging as a threat to the Asian country's crown. Data from crossborder greenfield investment tracker fDi Markets shows that Poland is averaging an annual growth of a staggering 68% in numbers of SSC investments. The country now ranks third globally for overall number of SSC projects captured since 2003, when fDi Markets’ data collection began, behind only India and the the US. The Polish city of Kraków comes sixth on the list of most popular cities for SSCs.
Between January 2003 and February 2012, India attracted the greatest number of SSC projects, with 175. This represents 24% of all SSCs projects recorded globally in this time. A total of 110 companies have invested in India during this period. Bangalore is the leading destination city, attracting 34 inward investment projects from 27 companies. However, project numbers for India have shown a marked decline, dropping from a high of 43 in 2006 to only four in 2011.
Advertisement
Favouring the few
The top 10 destination countries accounted for 71% of inward investment projects, indicating the SSC markets is highly clustered in only a few key locations globally.
Between 2003 and 2012, fDi Markets recorded a total of 723 SSC projects globally. The average project size was 421 jobs per project. Business services was the sector that accounted for the highest number of projects, with a total of 244, representing 34% of the investment projects. Among the top sectors, software and IT services recorded the highest growth, at 13% a year on average.
A total of 398 companies were recorded as investing overseas. Genpact from Bermuda is the top company, with a total of 20 investment projects announced between January 2003 and February 2012.
The US accounted for the highest number of outward investment projects overseas, with 377 projects. This represents 52% of the investment projects. The country that recorded the highest growth in outward investment is Germany, which showed an annual average growth rate of 46%.