Opendoor shuts India hub as AI reshapes outsourcing work

Opendoor is shutting down its India operations and moving about 250 roles back to the United States, a sharp reversal less than two years after the San Francisco-based home-buying platform expanded in the country. Chief executive Kaz Nejatian said the company wants operational work closer to U.S. customers, underscoring how AI and new operating models are starting to change where multinationals place white-collar work.

The move lands in a market that has become too large to dismiss as a peripheral back office. India’s global capability-centre ecosystem was estimated at 2,117 centres in FY2026, employing about 2.36 million people and generating $98.4 billion in revenue, according to Nasscom-Zinnov. That scale has made India the world’s largest GCC market and a central node for finance, technology, customer operations and other corporate functions once sent offshore mainly to save costs.

But the economics of that model are shifting. What once ran on labor arbitrage and large pools of manual process work is increasingly being reorganized around smaller, AI-native teams and more specialized tasks. Zinnov and Indiaspora said 55% of India’s GCC work portfolio faces AI displacement pressure, a sign that routine knowledge work is no longer insulated simply because it is digital or offshore. Opendoor’s decision fits that pattern: work that had been distributed to India is being pulled back toward the customer and away from fragmented workflows.

The reversal is notable because Opendoor had only built out its India footprint in 2024, meaning the company changed course in well under two years. In the broader GCC sector, the challenge is not whether India keeps growing, but what kind of work it will host next. An Infosys AI First GCC Index 2026 found that 499 of 500 surveyed Indian GCCs had deployed AI, and 71% were using generative AI across functions, yet many firms still had not translated that adoption into meaningful business impact. That gap explains why the sector is expanding even as pressure builds on routine roles.

For India’s outsourcing economy, the signal from Opendoor is larger than one company’s restructuring. The next phase of growth may come less from moving repetitive work offshore and more from building higher-value innovation hubs in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. As AI spreads, the question is whether GCCs can climb the value chain fast enough to absorb the tasks that automation is beginning to take away.