Captive Center
A captive center is an offshore facility wholly owned and operated by the company it serves, rather than by a third-party vendor. It gives maximum control and integration but requires the company to set up and run its own legal entity, payroll, and compliance.
A captive center grants a company immediate ownership and direct control over operations and intellectual property from the outset, typically handling a narrower set of operational tasks - IT support, finance, HR, or compliance - prioritizing cost-effectiveness and control over broad multifunction capability building. Captive centers operate largely as independent support units with less integration into the company's broader strategic roadmap than a GCC.
Captive centers require higher upfront investment and longer setup time than a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) arrangement, since the company handles the entity setup and regulatory work itself from day one rather than leveraging a partner's existing infrastructure and recruitment networks.