How to Set Up a Captive Center in India: A 90-Day to 12-Month Decision Framework Across Models, Cities, Costs, and Compliance

Q1: What exactly is a captive center (GCC) in India, and how is it different from an EOR?

A captive center, now called a Global Capability Center (GCC), is a wholly-owned offshore subsidiary that runs critical work for a parent company. "GCC" is the current NASSCOM term; "captive center" is the older label for the same thing. An EOR (Employer of Record) is faster but rents you compliance through someone else's registered entity. Most founders need the EOR first and the captive later, not one or the other.

The mistake I see in week one

I get this call from US founders almost weekly. They open with "I want to set up a captive in India," and they've already budgeted $300,000.

Then I ask how many people they're hiring. The answer is three.

You do not need a captive to hire three engineers in Bengaluru. You need a fast, compliant way to employ them while you learn whether India works for you.

Captive (GCC) versus EOR, in plain English

A captive is your own company in India, a Private Limited subsidiary you register, fund, and govern. You own the IP, the contracts, and every statutory filing under your own name.

An EOR is different. We become the legal employer of record, and your hire works for you day to day. We hold the PF, ESI, TDS, and professional tax registrations. You skip the entity, the bank account, and the FEMA paperwork entirely.

• Captive (GCC): your entity, your IP, full control, 12 to 18 month setup.
• EOR: our entity, your team, live in days, no setup capital.

Why this matters before you spend a rupee

Here is the belief I keep coming back to after six years of running multi-state placements. India is not a country you bolt on, it is a country you go deep in.

The smart play is treating an EOR as compliance muscle, not a workaround. You test the market, hire your first team, and prove the unit economics before committing $100,000 to an entity. That bridge from EOR to captive is the real decision this guide unpacks.

Q2: Should you set up a captive now or start with an EOR, and how long does each path take?

A conventional captive setup in India takes 12 to 18 months from site selection to occupancy. A managed-office model compresses that to 90 to 150 days through parallel procurement. Start with an EOR under roughly 10 to 15 hires or when you have no local leader. Bridge to a captive once headcount, IP sensitivity, or board pressure justifies a $100,000-plus entity, hiring your first engineer in 48 hours so you never freeze hiring during setup.

The governing idea: the bridge beats the either-or

Founders frame this as a binary. EOR or captive. Speed or control.

That framing is wrong, and it costs people six months. The bridge model uses an EOR as the foundation while your entity is being registered in parallel.

You get the first engineer live this week and the captive built by month six. No hiring freeze in between.

Three triggers that say "switch to a captive"

I might be wrong on the exact thresholds for your business, but these three signals show up every time.

1. Headcount: past 15 to 25 India hires, the per-head EOR fee starts to rival entity overhead.
2. IP sensitivity: core product IP usually belongs inside your own subsidiary, with direct employment contracts.
3. Governance pressure: a Series B board often wants the India team consolidated under one owned entity for diligence.

The timeline benchmarks

Here is what the real clock looks like when you sequence it properly.

The failure mode nobody mentions

The "shelf-ware entity" is the trap. Founders register a subsidiary, then leave FEMA and FC-GPR returns unfiled because they had no local compliance muscle in year one.

The bridge prevents this. We run the compliance while you build, which is also why we pitch ourselves as the one partner you never have to change, from your first EOR hire to a 200-person GCC.

Q3: Which operating model fits you, FTE captive, BOT, Virtual Captive, JV, or EOR?

An FTE captive gives maximum control and IP ownership, but the slowest, costliest setup. BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) lets a partner build it and hand it over later. A Virtual Captive blends managed services with your branding. A JV (Joint Venture) shares risk with a local partner. An EOR is the fastest entry, with zero entity. For Seed to Series B, EOR-then-captive usually wins on speed and reversibility.

One line on each model

Let me define these the way I'd explain them on a WhatsApp call.

• FTE captive: you build and own everything. Best control, slowest start.
• BOT: a partner builds and operates, then transfers the entity to you.
• Virtual Captive: a managed team that works under your brand, but on a partner's books.
• JV: you co-own with a local firm and split the risk.
• EOR: we employ your team on our entity; you direct the work.

Choose by stage, not by hype

The owned-entity advantage in a BOT

Here is where the standard read gets BOT backwards. People assume any BOT partner is equal.

They are not. Versatile operates through its own registered Indian entity, Foo Falcon Technologies Private Limited, not a reseller's compliance shell.

That matters at transfer time. When you eventually take the entity, you inherit clean filings from a real owner, not a tangle of subcontracted partner records. From what surfaces when you actually run these transfers, that single fact removes months of cleanup.

Q4: Which Indian city should host your captive, and does the Hub-and-Spoke model cut costs?

Bengaluru is India's captive capital for technology and AI. Hyderabad is the fastest-growing alternative for fintech and semiconductors. Pune leads automotive engineering, Mumbai dominates BFSI, and Chennai handles back-office and manufacturing. A Hub-and-Spoke model keeps your core HQ in a Tier-1 city while routing growth into Tier-2 hubs like Jaipur or Coimbatore, cutting real-estate and talent costs by 25 to 30%.

Concept: match the city to the function

City choice is really function choice. You are buying a talent pool, not a postcode.

Six Tier-1 cities host roughly 92% of India's GCCs today. Each one has a center of gravity.

Example: a Bengaluru hub with a Coimbatore spoke

Picture a 40-person engineering team. You keep your 8 senior leads and architects in Bengaluru, the hub.

Then you place the 32-person delivery layer in Coimbatore, the spoke. Real-estate and salary costs on that layer drop 25 to 30%. Your senior talent still sits where the deep pool is.

Application: when Tier-2 actually pays off

Here is my honest hedge. Tier-2 savings are real, but the senior talent pool there is thinner.

So the rule is simple. Put leadership and scarce skills in the Tier-1 hub, scale repeatable work in the spoke. This is part of why founders weigh the full cost of hiring in India before signing a lease.

This is also why we run a pre-setup feasibility study for Tier-2 expansion before you sign a lease. Global generalists who treat India as one of 150 countries do not offer that ground-level read, because they have never placed engineers in Coimbatore. If you want to pressure-test your own numbers, our build-a-team-in-India playbook maps function to city before you commit.

Q5: What does it actually cost to set up and run a captive center in India?

Expect $100,000 to $500,000 in year one for a 20 to 50 person captive, with ongoing costs running 40 to 60% below equivalent US operations, and fit-out near $1,500 to $3,000 per seat. But the Code on Wages rule forcing Basic plus DA to at least 50% of pay raises your true per-head cost. A possible EPF wage-ceiling hike from ₹15,000 toward ₹21,000 should be modeled now.

The headline numbers, and the trap inside them

Most cost guides stop at the sticker price. Year one runs $100,000 to $500,000 for a 20 to 50 person team.

That number is real, but it hides the part that bites a CFO at month-end. Your statutory employer cost is not a rounding error in India.

The line items that actually move your budget

Here is the breakdown I walk founders through on a call.

The wage-floor math nobody models

This is where the standard cost read gets it backwards. ⚠️

The Code on Wages, 2019, requires that Basic plus DA equal at least 50% of total remuneration. When allowances exceed that, the excess gets added back into "wages."

That reclassification lifts your PF (12% of wages), gratuity accrual (4.81% of Basic plus DA), and bonus base. On a ₹76,000 monthly package, the Labour Ministry's own example pushes ₹2,000 of excess allowance back into wages. You can pressure-test these figures with our employee cost calculator.

And the EPF wage ceiling sits at ₹15,000 today, but the Supreme Court has directed a review toward ₹21,000. Model both numbers per head before you sign, and check accrual impact in our gratuity calculator.

What buyers say about hidden EOR costs

I'll let real reviewers make the point about transparency, since they have no reason to flatter anyone.

"I find Deel to be absurdly expensive. They charge a high amount of fees for transferring money to my bank account."

Juan Camilo O. Deel G2 Verified Review

"I dislike how expensive Deel's transaction fees are, especially when moving money from the Deel account to my bank."

Maria M. Deel G2 Verified Review

This is why we invoice in USD direct from our own Indian entity, with no FX markup, no setup fee, and the first month free. You see the loaded cost before you commit, not after. Compare the full picture on our India EOR pricing page.

Q6: Why is 90-day retention, not legal fees, the real cost of setting up a captive?

The real cost of a captive is not the legal fee. It is a "compliant" hire who quits in four months and resets your roadmap. Hire your India Head before any engineer to set local culture and accountability, and treat 90-day retention as your primary setup KPI. Culture-fit-first hiring beats compliance-only hiring every time, because compliance is the floor, not the ceiling.

The number everyone tracks, and the one that matters

Most founders obsess over the entity invoice. $15,000 here, a FEMA filing there.

I could be off on the exact ratio, but here is what I've watched across six years of placements. The legal fee is a one-time line. A bad hire who walks at month four is a recurring wound.

Why attrition is the silent setup cost

When a key engineer leaves at 90 days, you lose more than a salary. You lose ramp time, context, and roadmap velocity.

That reset can cost a quarter of progress. No registration fee comes close to that damage. This is exactly why we built a retention-first EOR model in India.

This is also why support quality keeps surfacing in EOR reviews as the deciding factor.

"I've noticed that their support query responses can occasionally take a bit longer, likely due to a relatively small team."

Verified User in Financial Services Wisemonk G2 Verified Review

The "Hire the Head first" rule

Here is the contrarian move the category avoids saying out loud. Do not hire engineers first.

Hire your India Head first. A local leader sets culture, owns accountability, and screens for fit before you scale headcount.

Engineers hired into a vacuum, with no local anchor, are the ones who leave. That is the pattern I see again and again when companies build a team in India.

How we treat retention as a setup metric

We built our model around this belief, not around a price anchor.

• ✅ Culture-fit-first hiring across 50 behavioral parameters, not just skills.
• ✅ A 90-day Success Coach assigned to every placement.
• ✅ A 6-month replacement guarantee on C2H placements.

Wisemonk runs a strong India-native EOR with a $99 anchor and a 4.85 G2 rating across 261 reviews. What I have not seen them publish is a structured 90-day Success Coach or a replacement guarantee. See how the two stack up on our Wisemonk vs Versatile Club comparison. From what surfaces when you actually run placements, retention is the metric that decides whether your setup succeeded.

Q7: What is the step-by-step entity-setup and compliance roadmap?

Register a wholly-owned subsidiary via MCA SPICe+, file FEMA FC-GPR with the RBI within 30 days of share allotment, register under PF, ESI, professional tax, and the state Shops and Establishments Act, complete DPDP Rules 2025 readiness, and commission a transfer-pricing study before your first inter-company invoice. Each step carries a statutory deadline. Missing FC-GPR is the classic "shelf-ware entity" trap.

The roadmap, in the order it actually happens

Founders ask me for the sequence, not a theory. Here it is, with the deadline that bites if you miss it.

1. Register the entity (MCA SPICe+). File for your Private Limited subsidiary. Outcome: a live company with a CIN. ⏰ Allow 2 to 4 weeks.
2. File FEMA FC-GPR with the RBI. Report foreign share allotment within 30 days. ⚠️ Miss this and you have a "shelf-ware entity" with a compounding penalty.
3. Open the FDI bank account. Needed before capital lands and before FC-GPR can close cleanly.
4. Register labor and tax IDs. PF (12% contribution), ESI (3.25% employer, 0.75% employee), professional tax, and the state Shops and Establishments Act.
5. Build DPDP readiness. The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, were notified by MeitY in November 2025. You need consent notices and a breach process.
6. Commission a transfer-pricing study. Lock a defensible cost-plus margin before the first inter-company invoice.

The "compliance muscle" gap in year one

This is where the standard "just set up a subsidiary" playbook quietly fails people.

Registering is easy. Running PF challans, multi-state PT filings, and FC-GPR on time for 12 months is the hard part, which is why many teams lean on India payroll outsourcing from day one.

"The initial documentation and paperwork felt quite detailed and time-consuming at the beginning. As we progressed, it became clear this thoroughness is what ensures proper legal and compliance coverage."

Verified User in Marketing and Advertising Wisemonk G2 Verified Review

How ownership changes the filing story

We run these filings under our own registrations, across all 28 states and 8 union territories. That is ownership over abstraction, and it is the backbone of our company registration in India support.

When a US founder messages me at 11pm asking why a PF challan has not landed, the answer comes from our own EPFO login, not a subcontracted partner's queue. The bridge model means your entity inherits clean books, not a year of catch-up.

Q8: How do you avoid the Permanent Establishment, FEMA, and gratuity "audit traps"?

Three traps stall a GCC transition during Series B or C diligence: Permanent Establishment exposure on the parent, unfiled FEMA or FC-GPR returns, and unaccrued statutory liabilities like gratuity. The fix is a defensible cost-plus transfer-pricing margin (commonly 12 to 18%), FEMA reporting within 30 days, and accruing gratuity from day one, not the week before the audit.

Situation: the data room that looked clean

Picture a CFO at a $30M ARR SaaS company prepping a Series B data room. The India numbers look fine on the surface.

Then the acquirer's diligence team starts pulling threads. That is when the quiet liabilities surface.

Complication: the three threads that snap

I've seen this exact sequence stall deals for months.

• ❌ Unaccrued gratuity. Gratuity accrues at 4.81% of Basic plus DA every month. Skip the accrual, and a lump-sum liability appears overnight in diligence.
• ❌ Missing FC-GPR. Foreign investment never reported to the RBI within 30 days. A compounding penalty plus a cleanup delay.
• ❌ PE risk. If the India entity looks like it earns the parent's revenue, the parent can face Permanent Establishment tax exposure.

Resolution: the fixes you do early, not late

None of these are hard if you front-load them.

1. ✅ Set a cost-plus transfer-pricing margin, commonly 12 to 18%, and document it before the first invoice.
2. ✅ File FC-GPR within the 30-day FEMA window.
3. ✅ Accrue gratuity monthly from day one. You can gauge your exposure with our permanent establishment risk quiz.

Reviewers know the cost of getting the back-end wrong with a generalist.

"The PF transfer for employees after terminating their employment with Velocity was very poor. There was limited help, delayed responses."

Verified User Velocity Global G2 Verified Review

The takeaway from the audit chair

Where my head is right now is simple. Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling, and it is why founders choose a compliance-deep EOR in India.

The firms that sail through diligence treated FEMA, gratuity, and transfer pricing as day-one habits. The ones that stall treated them as a pre-audit scramble. One of those costs a weekend; the other costs a quarter.

Q9: How do you keep Permanent Establishment and FEMA risk off your parent company's books?

Three traps stall a GCC transition during Series B or C diligence: Permanent Establishment exposure on the parent, unfiled FEMA or FC-GPR returns, and unaccrued statutory liabilities like gratuity. The fix is a defensible cost-plus transfer-pricing margin, commonly 12 to 18%, FEMA reporting within 30 days, and accruing gratuity from day one.

A scaling story that taught me this the hard way

A US financial-services client once started a hire in Greece, thinking they were employing in London. That single mix-up forced them to rethink their entire global hiring infrastructure.

India is where this gets expensive, because the parent's tax exposure rides on how the India entity is structured. Get it wrong, and the risk lands on the parent's books, not the subsidiary's. A compliance-deep Employer of Record in India insulates that exposure.

The PE risk most founders never see coming

Permanent Establishment (PE) means a foreign company is treated as having a taxable presence in India. If your India team looks like it earns the parent's revenue, the parent can face Indian tax on that profit.

The insulation is a transfer-pricing study. You document a cost-plus margin, so the India entity is paid for services, not booking the parent's revenue. Our permanent establishment risk quiz flags where you stand.

The FEMA clock that keeps ticking

FEMA (the Foreign Exchange Management Act) governs how foreign capital enters your Indian entity. You must file FC-GPR with the RBI within 30 days of allotting shares to the parent.

⚠️ Miss it, and the penalty compounds quietly until a diligence team finds it. This is one reason teams lean on a partner who handles company registration in India end to end.

What I tell CFOs to lock before the first invoice

Here is the short list I run through on a WhatsApp call.

• ✅ Document a cost-plus transfer-pricing margin (12 to 18%) before any inter-company invoice.
• ✅ File FC-GPR inside the 30-day FEMA window.
• ✅ Accrue gratuity monthly at 4.81% of Basic plus DA.

From what surfaces when you actually sit in these audits, the firms that pass treated all three as day-one habits. Compliance is the floor here, not the ceiling, which is why finance teams partner early.

Q10: Is your captive DPDP-ready, and how do you handle ESOPs before the entity is live?

Under the DPDP Rules, 2025, notified by MeitY in November 2025, your India center needs itemized employee consent, including for background checks, defined security safeguards, and a 72-hour breach-reporting process to the Data Protection Board. For equity, founders typically use phantom stock or RSU-equivalents until the Indian entity is authorized to issue shares.

What DPDP actually asks of you, in plain English

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, is India's privacy law. The Rules notified in November 2025 made the obligations concrete.

For an employer, three duties matter most. You need clear consent, real security, and a fast breach response.

• ✅ Itemized consent notices in plain language.
• ✅ Security safeguards like encryption, with logs retained.
• ✅ A 72-hour breach report to the Data Protection Board.

The background-check detail people miss

Here is the concrete application. Background verification touches Aadhaar, PAN, education, and employment history.

Under DPDP, you cannot just run that check. You need the candidate's specific, informed consent for each category of data you verify, which is how compliant background verification companies in India now operate.

I think this gets treated as a checkbox, and that is the wrong read. Consent done respectfully signals to a new hire how you'll treat their data for years, a principle baked into our India payroll compliance setup.

The ESOP problem before your entity exists

Founders want to give India hires equity early. The snag: your Indian entity often cannot issue shares yet.

The common workaround is phantom stock or RSU-equivalents. These promise a cash payout tied to share value, without issuing actual shares prematurely. Structuring this well sits alongside NPS tax structuring in a competitive offer.

It lets you compete for senior talent on equity, even on day one of an EOR engagement, especially when you hire employees in India at speed. You convert to real options once the entity is authorized.

Q11: Versatile vs. Wisemonk vs. the global generalists: who should run your India setup?

For single-country India depth, an India-native owned-entity partner like Versatile fits best. One partner from your first EOR hire to a 200-person GCC, USD invoicing direct from India, a 5-day onboarding SLA, and the founder reachable on WhatsApp. Global generalists like Deel, Remote, and G-P suit multi-country sprawl, but treat India as one of 150 countries.

How to actually decide

Pick on depth versus breadth. That is the real fork.

If India is your focus, choose an owned-entity India specialist. If you need 5-plus countries at once, a generalist platform makes sense. Our Wisemonk alternatives breakdown digs deeper.

What real buyers report

The support gap shows up clearly in verified reviews.

"Often the CS doesn't seem to have answers, which leads me to emails back and forth, and something I was looking for the answer to in 20 minutes becomes a 4 day process."

Verified User in Computer Software Deel G2 Verified Review

"Support is the single biggest failure. There is no direct phone line. You either email or use a chatbot, and you can ask both the same question and get two different wrong answers."

Erika D. Rippling G2 Verified Review

Wisemonk earns its strong reputation, and buyers feel it.

"It feels like working with a partner rather than just a payment or compliance vendor."

Verified User in Marketing and Advertising Wisemonk G2 Verified Review

Where we are honestly the wrong choice

I'll name it plainly. If you need EOR across 5-plus countries, or you're a B2C consumer company, or your procurement gates on SOC 2 and ISO 27001 for a 100-plus India team, a generalist or Wisemonk fits better than us.

We operate only in India, by design. That is the trade for the depth and the founder-on-WhatsApp access, which is exactly why founders build a team in India with us.

Q12: What should you do in the first 90 days? Your Monday-morning action plan.

In your first 90 days: hire your India Head before any engineer, place your first 1 to 3 hires on EOR within a week, start entity registration in parallel, re-model offer letters so Basic plus DA is at least 50%, commission a transfer-pricing study, and set 90-day retention as your primary setup KPI. Speed and governance are not a trade-off if you sequence them right.

The sequence, by who owns it

Here is the plan I'd hand you on a call, split by role.

Founder, week 1 to 2

1. Hire your India Head first. Culture and accountability start with a local leader.
2. Place your first 1 to 3 hires on EOR. Live in 5 days, no entity needed, the way you hire in India without an entity.

People Ops, week 2 to 8

1. Build DPDP consent notices for employee and background-check data.
2. Set 90-day retention as the KPI you report to the board, the core of a retention-first EOR.

CFO, week 2 to 12

1. Re-model offer letters so Basic plus DA is at least 50% of pay.
2. Commission a transfer-pricing study before the first inter-company invoice.
3. Add an EPF-ceiling sensitivity row, ₹15,000 versus ₹21,000, to the cost model using our employee cost calculator.

Start the entity in parallel, not after

The mistake is sequencing the entity after the hires. Run them together.

Your first engineer ships code this week on EOR. Your subsidiary registers in the background, ready by month six, which is the heart of the EOR vs entity decision.

Where my head is, and an invitation

What I think shifts in the next two years is this. India stops being one pin on a 150-country map, and owned-entity specialists start eating the generalists' India revenue.

If you're sketching your first India hire or a full GCC, message me to talk it through and tell me what you're building. Not a CSM rotation, not a ticket. The person who built this, working through your sequence with you.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How much does it cost to set up a captive center in India?

  We typically see year-one costs of 100,000 to 500,000 dollars for a 20 to 50 person captive, with ongoing operating costs running 40 to 60 percent below an equivalent US operation. Office fit-out adds roughly 1,500 to 3,000 dollars per seat depending on the city.

  The number most founders miss is statutory burden. Under the Code on Wages, Basic plus DA must be at least 50 percent of total pay, which lifts your provident fund, gratuity, and bonus base.

  • Entity setup: 15,000 to 30,000 dollars, one-time.
  • Annual payroll burden: salary plus 12 percent PF and 4.81 percent gratuity accrual.
  • Compliance filings: ongoing PF, ESI, TDS, and professional tax.

  We always model the EPF wage ceiling at both 15,000 and 21,000 rupees, since a review is pending. You can pressure-test your own numbers with our employee cost calculator before you commit any capital. We invoice in USD direct from our own Indian entity, with no setup fee and the first month free, so you see the loaded cost upfront.

• Should we start with an EOR or build a captive entity in India?

  For most companies under 15 hires, we recommend starting with an EOR and bridging to a captive later. The framing of speed versus control is a false choice when you sequence both in parallel.

  An EOR gets your first engineer live in days with no entity, while you test the market and prove unit economics. A captive gives full IP ownership and control but takes 12 to 18 months to stand up.

  We watch for three triggers that signal it is time to switch:

  • Headcount past roughly 15 to 25 India hires.
  • Core product IP that belongs inside your own subsidiary.
  • Series B board pressure to consolidate the India team under one owned entity.

  The bridge model uses an EOR as the foundation while your entity registers in the background, so you never freeze hiring. Our EOR vs entity guide walks through the exact decision points. This avoids the classic shelf-ware entity trap, where founders register a subsidiary then leave FEMA returns unfiled because they had no local compliance muscle in year one.

• Which Indian city is best for a captive center?

  The right city depends on the function you are building, since you are really buying a talent pool, not a postcode. Six Tier-1 cities host roughly 92 percent of India's captive centers today, and each has a center of gravity.

  • Bengaluru: deepest pool for technology, AI, and product.
  • Hyderabad: fastest-growing for fintech and semiconductors.
  • Pune: strongest for automotive and engineering.
  • Mumbai: dominant for banking, financial services, and insurance.
  • Chennai: strong for back-office and manufacturing.

  A hub-and-spoke model keeps your senior leadership in a Tier-1 hub while routing repeatable delivery work into a Tier-2 city like Coimbatore or Jaipur. That cuts real-estate and salary costs by 25 to 30 percent on the delivery layer.

  The honest caveat is that senior talent in Tier-2 cities is thinner, so we keep architects and scarce skills in the hub. We run a pre-setup feasibility study before you sign any lease, which is the kind of ground-level read global generalists cannot offer. If you want help mapping function to city, our build a team in India playbook is the place to start.

• What compliance traps stall a captive center during fundraising diligence?

  We see three traps repeatedly stall a captive transition during Series B or C diligence. None are hard to avoid if you front-load them, but each one can delay a deal by months when discovered late.

  • Permanent Establishment exposure: if the India entity looks like it earns the parent's revenue, the parent can face Indian tax. A cost-plus transfer-pricing margin of 12 to 18 percent insulates this.
  • Unfiled FEMA FC-GPR: foreign share allotment must be reported to the RBI within 30 days, or penalties compound quietly.
  • Unaccrued gratuity: gratuity accrues at 4.81 percent of Basic plus DA monthly, so skipping it creates a sudden lump-sum liability.

  The fix is treating all three as day-one habits, not a pre-audit scramble. We document transfer pricing before the first invoice, file FC-GPR inside the window, and accrue gratuity from month one. You can gauge your own exposure with our permanent establishment risk quiz. The firms that sail through diligence built these habits early; the ones that stall left them to the week before the audit.

• What should we do in the first 90 days of setting up an India team?

  We sequence the first 90 days by role so speed and governance never trade off against each other. The biggest mistake is sequencing the entity after the hires; run them together instead.

  • Founder, week 1 to 2: hire your India Head before any engineer, then place your first 1 to 3 hires on EOR within a week.
  • People Ops, week 2 to 8: build DPDP consent notices and set 90-day retention as your reported KPI.
  • CFO, week 2 to 12: re-model offer letters so Basic plus DA is at least 50 percent, commission a transfer-pricing study, and add an EPF-ceiling sensitivity row.

  Your first engineer ships code this week on EOR, while your subsidiary registers in the background, ready by month six. Hiring the India Head first sets culture and accountability before you scale headcount, which is what protects your 90-day retention. If you want to work through your own sequence, you can book a consultation with us and tell us what you are building.