Services sector geography

Story hook

In 1985, a young Texas Instruments executive landed in Bengaluru to set up India's first software development centre. The TI India team had just 20 engineers. The choice of Bengaluru wasn't random — it had public-sector engineering (HAL, BEL, ITI, BHEL), good weather, and English-speaking talent. The next 39 years would see this seed grow into a $254-billion services industry that exports software to 80+ countries, employs 5.4 million people, and has redrawn the geography of Indian cities.

The Indian services sector is now ~55% of GDP and ~30% of employment. It includes IT-BPM, finance, real estate, trade, transport, communication, tourism, education, healthcare — and post-2020, a new category called "Global Capability Centres" (GCCs) that has exploded from 1,000 in 2015 to 1,800+ by 2024. Goldman Sachs has a 9,000-strong Bengaluru centre. Google has 14,000 in Hyderabad. Walmart Sourcing India in Bengaluru employs 25,000.

The geography of this is not random. Bengaluru (40% of IT exports), Hyderabad (17%), Pune (14%), Chennai (9%), NCR (10%), Mumbai (5%) — these "Big 6" cities account for 95% of IT exports. The other 5% comes from Tier 2 emerging cities: Coimbatore, Trivandrum, Bhubaneswar, Indore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Kochi. Why this lopsided distribution? Because services concentrate where talent + infra

• ecosystem coalesce — much more so than manufacturing.

Tourism follows different geography: golden circuits (Delhi- Agra-Jaipur), temple corridors (Tamil Nadu, Andhra), beach belts (Goa, Kerala), mountain ranges (Himachal, Uttarakhand). Healthcare hubs cluster around medical universities (CMC Vellore, AIIMS Delhi, KEM Mumbai) and around affordable surgical destinations (Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru for medical tourism). The services sector is, in many ways, the most globally visible face of modern India.

Why this matters for UPSC

Services sector geography is asked in GS-I (Geography) and GS-III (Economy). UPSC asks 1-2 Prelims questions every year on IT corridors, BPO cities, tourism circuits. Mains asked 2018, 2020, 2022, 2024 about services-led growth, IT clusters, tourism potential. Medium-to-high weight.