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What Is It Really Like to Build a Remote Team in India?
- Saransh Garg
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Fourteen days. That is how long it took our desk to close a mid to senior engineering hire for a Series B fintech founder in Toronto, from signed scope to signed offer. When founders ask us what it is really like to build a remote team in India, that timeline is usually the first surprise. The second surprise comes later: the paperwork after the offer, not the hiring itself, is where most first time founders actually get stuck. We have run over 500 of these mandates for companies with no legal entity in India, and the pattern repeats often enough that we can walk you through your first ninety days almost exactly.
Why Are Founders Rushing to Build a Remote Team in India?
Three forces are driving this at the same time. Global Capability Centers (GCC), the in house tech arms companies like Walmart and Goldman Sachs run out of India, have added huge numbers of engineering roles across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune, and they pay aggressively to defend headcount.
Cloud migration and AI adoption have pushed demand for engineers who can work across cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and applied AI tooling, and India's engineering pipeline has scaled to meet exactly that demand. And founders themselves are more comfortable running distributed teams than they were a few years ago, since async tools and AI assisted coding workflows have made remote collaboration far less friction heavy than it used to be.
Which Indian Cities Have the Right Talent for Your Team?
Here is what we actually see across live mandates:
Bengaluru: deepest bench for cloud native, AI, and product engineering, but the most expensive and the most competitive for retention.
Hyderabad: strong enterprise and fintech engineering talent, salaries run 10 to 15 percent below Bengaluru for the same experience level.
Pune: solid product and platform engineering bench with noticeably better retention, since the local job market has fewer aggressive counteroffers.
Chennai: underrated backend and SaaS talent pool, especially engineers from NIT Trichy and IIT Madras.
Delhi NCR: strongest bench for founder style, fast moving engineering culture, common in consumer tech and early stage product teams.
What Indian engineers consistently bring: strong fundamentals, real comfort working across US, UK, and Australian hours, and growing hands on experience with AI powered development tools.
What Indian Labour Law Really Means When You Build a Remote Team in India
This is the section founders skim, then call us about a few months later.
India's four consolidated Labour Codes, the Code on Wages, the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, are now technically in force nationally, replacing 29 older central laws. But central rules were only finalised recently, and several major states are still rolling out their own rules, so your actual compliance obligations are a mix of the new codes and legacy legislation depending on where your engineer is based. Anyone who tells you this is fully settled is not being accurate.
The Employees' Provident Fund Act requires a 12 percent employer contribution once headcount crosses 20 employees, a threshold most founders hit immediately if they hire through an established EOR partner. The Shops and Establishments Act is state specific, so your obligations on working hours and leave differ across Karnataka, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu, which is the most common thing get wrong when writing one policy for a team spread across cities. And gratuity eligibility is shifting from five years of service to one year for fixed term employees as the new codes take hold, which changes the true cost of even short contracts.
Contract Hiring or Full-Time Hiring: Which One Should You Start With?
A contract hire in India works under a fixed scope and timeline, is paid through the agency or EOR's payroll, and can be scaled up or down without notice period complications. It is the right choice for project based work, testing a role before committing, or scaling a team quickly for a defined build. Full-time hiring makes sense once the role is core to your product and you need continuity, deeper context, and long term ownership from that person.
We usually recommend founders start with a contract engagement for the first 60 to 90 days, then convert to full-time once both sides are confident it is a fit. This avoids the cost and complexity of unwinding a full-time hire that isn't working out, and it gives the engineer a low pressure way to evaluate your company too.
If you're ready to see what this looks like for your specific role and city, book a short call with our hiring desk here and we will map out your first ninety days before you write a job description.
How Long Does It Take to Hire in India, and What Can Go Wrong?
Our standard cycle for a mid to senior technical hire runs 10 to 14 days once scope is signed: three days for sourcing and shortlisting, four days for technical screening through a live pairing session rather than a generic test, three days for founder interviews, and the remainder for offer and background checks.
Here is a mandate that nearly went wrong, details anonymised. A US based healthtech company, around 40 employees, engaged AnjuSmriti Global to hire three backend engineers in Pune for a HIPAA adjacent product. We placed all three within eighteen days. Six weeks later, the client's own legal team had drafted the engagement contract using a US contractor template, with no data processing clause covering India's data protection obligations.
We caught the gap during onboarding compliance review, before any production data was touched, and the client's counsel fixed it within four days. Zero disruption to the build, and every new hire since has gone through our compliance checklist before day one.
How Much Does It Actually Cost to Hire Engineers in India?
These are current annual CTC figures we quote for backend and full-stack roles, in INR lakhs per annum:
Level | Bengaluru | Hyderabad | Pune | Chennai |
Mid (3 to 5 yrs) | 18 to 28 | 16 to 24 | 15 to 22 | 14 to 20 |
Senior (6 to 9 yrs) | 32 to 48 | 28 to 42 | 26 to 38 | 24 to 35 |
Lead (10+ yrs) | 50 to 75 | 45 to 65 | 42 to 60 | 38 to 55 |
On top of base CTC, budget employer PF at 12 percent, gratuity provisioning around 4.8 percent, and an EOR fee that typically runs $200 to $450 per employee per month if you're not running your own entity. Agency placement fees for full-time hires generally run 15 to 20 percent of first year CTC. Against a comparable US senior engineer at $150,000 to $190,000 plus payroll tax, the fully loaded India cost typically lands 55 to 70 percent lower, even after every fee is counted.
Conclusion
The next phase of this trend is AI native hiring. Founders are no longer just hiring backend and full-stack engineers, they are hiring engineers who can build with AI tools, evaluate model outputs, and integrate applied AI into existing products, and India's engineering talent pool is adapting fast to meet that demand. We are also seeing Bengaluru salary growth start to plateau while Pune and Chennai stay genuinely cost advantaged, which is quietly making tier two hubs the smarter first move for founders who don't need to be in the highest profile city.
If you are deciding whether to run this yourselves or bring in a partner who has already made the mistakes for you, that conversation is worth having before you write the first job description. Talk to our hiring team here and we will map your fastest, safest path to build a remote team in India.
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FAQs
1.How long does it take to build a remote team in India from scratch?
For a first small team of three to five engineers, expect 10 to 14 days per hire once your scope and budget are finalised, so a full team typically comes together within four to six weeks. Timelines stretch if you're hiring through your own entity, since registration and payroll setup can add several weeks before the first offer even goes out.
2.Do I need to register a company in India to hire remote employees there?
No. Most founders hire their first five to fifteen employees through an Employer of Record without registering an entity. The EOR becomes the legal employer on paper and handles PF, gratuity, and statutory filings, while you manage the person's day to day work directly, the same way you would any other team member.
3.What's the difference between hiring a contractor and hiring a full-time employee in India?
A contractor works under a fixed scope and is paid through invoices or an agency payroll, with no long term employment obligation on your side. A full-time employee is on payroll, entitled to PF, gratuity, and leave benefits, and expects continuity. Contract hiring suits project work and testing a role; full-time suits core, long term positions.
4.Which Indian city is best for hiring remote software engineers?
It depends on your budget and role. Bengaluru has the deepest talent pool but the highest salaries and most competition for retention. Pune and Chennai offer strong engineering talent at lower cost with better retention. Hyderabad is a strong middle ground, particularly for enterprise and fintech style engineering work.
5.What happens if I misclassify an Indian employee as a contractor?
If the person works fixed hours, reports into your management structure, and uses your equipment, Indian authorities can recharacterise the relationship as employment, even if the contract says contractor. This retroactively triggers PF and gratuity obligations and can create tax exposure for both the engineer and your company.
6.How much do Indian engineers cost compared to US or UK engineers?
A senior backend engineer in India typically costs 55 to 70 percent less than the same seniority in the US, and 45 to 60 percent less than the UK, once you count base salary, employer contributions, and any EOR or agency fees. The gap narrows in Bengaluru and widens in cities like Pune and Chennai.
7.Can Indian remote employees work effectively across different time zones?
Yes. Most mid career engineers in India's major tech hubs have already worked with US or European clients in a prior role. A 9:30am to 6:30pm IST schedule gives two to three hours of live overlap with US East Coast evenings, and considerably more overlap with European working hours.
8.What's changing in India's labour laws that affects remote hiring?
India's four consolidated Labour Codes are in force nationally, but state level rules are still rolling out unevenly, so compliance currently depends on a mix of new and legacy law based on where your engineer is located. The clearest near term change is gratuity eligibility moving from five years to one year for fixed term employees.
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