Sri Lanka, Sept. 30 -- US President Donald Trump's H-1B visa crackdown will hasten United States firms' shift of critical work to India, turbocharging the growth of global capability centres that handle operations from finance to research and development, economists and industry insiders say.

The world's fifth-largest economy is home to 1,700 global capability centres, or more than half the global tally, having outgrown its tech support origins to become a hub of high-value innovation in areas from design of luxury car dashboards to drug discovery.

Trends such as growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and increasing curbs on visas are pushing US firms to redraw labour strategies, with global capability centres in India emergin...