Hire Employees in India from France

French employment law teaches habits that transfer to India better than most founders expect: written contracts, statutory contributions on fixed dates, notice periods taken seriously. Your CDI instincts are an asset. The mechanics they attach to just change names.

🧾 The mapping, in one pass

The employment contract is genuinely contractual, as at home. Social contributions become provident fund at roughly 12% of eligible wages, ESI at 3.25% where salaries qualify, gratuity accruing at 4.81%. The URSSAF calendar becomes the EPFO one: deposits by the 15th monthly, TDS by the 7th. Notice periods and severance exist, are enforceable, and are defined by statute and contract rather than a convention collective.

⚠️ Where the instincts mislead

Two places. Indian offers are negotiated as CTC, a bundled cost-to-company figure with employer contributions inside it, so a French reading of the headline number overprices the offer. And penalties compound harder: late PF collects 12% annual interest plus damages up to 25%, with no grace culture around the dates.

🤔 The entity question, answered the French way

You would not found a société for two employees abroad, and the same logic holds here. Employment through an EOR starts in five business days on an existing registered payroll; a subsidiary takes about half a year. Incorporate when the team justifies the overhead, and the employees transfer with tenure and PF intact.

Paris to Bengaluru is 3.5 to 4.5 hours of offset, and it splits the day into a rhythm that suits both sides once you stop fighting it. Here is the schedule that works, hour by hour.

⏰ The window: 9h30 to roughly 15h30

From the moment Paris sits down, Bengaluru is already mid-afternoon. The two teams then share five to six hours until the Indian evening winds down. Standups, reviews, pairing and decisions all fit inside ordinary French office hours. No 7am calls, no late-night heroics on either side of the map.

🔁 After 15h30: the quiet stretch

France's late afternoon runs solo. Use it for deep work and for writing tomorrow's brief, which Bengaluru picks up at their 10am, hours before you wake. The teams that treat this stretch as a second collaboration window end up taxing Indian evenings for meetings that needed nobody.

🧾 What must never enter the shared window

Payroll questions. Indian statutory deadlines, PF and ESIC by the 15th, TDS by the 7th, get handled in Indian hours by our Bengaluru team, with proof filed to your account. The overlap is too valuable to spend on administration that never needed you.

One euro invoice a month. That is the entire financial interface of an India team run through an EOR, and for your expert-comptable it is the difference between a five-minute reconciliation and a drawer of SWIFT confirmations. Here is what sits inside the invoice, line by line.

🧾 The lines, decomposed

Gross salaries at their agreed rupee values. Employer statutory contributions itemised: provident fund near 12% of eligible wages, ESI at 3.25% where applicable, gratuity accruing at 4.81%. Then our service fee as its own line: $149 USD per employee monthly, $129 beyond 20. Every figure converts to euros at the RBI reference rate.

💸 The rate, and what is not in it

The RBI reference rate is India's published market benchmark, and we convert at it with zero spread added. Many providers take their real margin here: two or three percent inside the exchange rate dwarfs any difference in headline fees. Ask any competing provider to name their rate source in writing.

🤔 What disappears from your side

Wire forms, remittance certificates, FIRC chasing, TDS-on-remittance questions: gone. You pay one invoice from your French account like any other supplier. The rupee mechanics happen under our registration, documented monthly.

⭐ The verdict

If an India payroll cannot be explained to your accountant in one invoice, the structure is wrong. This one can.