If you divide the globe into neat hour-wide slices you get 24. In practice the world uses around 38 distinct offsets in current use, because several regions sit on half-hour or 45-minute offsets and a few sit beyond the ±12 hour range.
Examples: India is UTC+5:30, Iran is UTC+3:30, parts of Australia use UTC+9:30, Nepal uses UTC+5:45, and Kiribati reaches UTC+14.