Most US founders who want
to hire in India hit the same wall. The talent is there. The cost case is
obvious. But getting a legal employee on payroll requires either setting up an
Indian private limited company or finding a vendor to manage your team at arm's
length.
The entity route costs
$20,000 to $150,000 and takes three to six months before a single hire is live.
The vendor route gives you staff you don't fully control. Neither is what most
founders actually want.
Kaamwork sits in the gap
between those two options.
What
"Offshore Office" Actually Means
An offshore office is not
a vendor contract. It is your team, in India, working full-time on your
product, in your Slack, in your standups, reporting to your managers. The only
real difference from a US hire is the employment paperwork and the payroll currency.
Most platforms that claim
to offer this deliver something closer to staff augmentation. You get access to
people, but the relationship is mediated. A country head. An account manager.
Someone who summarizes what your engineer said and routes it back to you two
days later.
Kaamwork removes that
layer. Each US manager works directly with their India hire. The engineer
attends your standups. They know your product priorities because they're
hearing them from the people setting them.
How
Kaamwork Makes 48-Hour Onboarding Work
Kaamwork
is an Employer of Record (EOR). Kaamwork becomes the legal employer of your
India hire on paper. Kaamwork signs the employment contract, runs payroll in
INR, handles PF (Provident Fund) at 12% of basic salary, ESIC, TDS, Gratuity,
and state-specific professional tax. You manage the work.
The admin that would take
a legal team three to six months to build from scratch, Kaamwork already has in
place. Employment contracts under Indian law. Statutory registrations with EPFO
and ESIC. Payroll infrastructure. Compliance tracking as Indian labor rules
change.
From the day you close an
offer, onboarding completes in 48 to 72 hours.
The fee is $599 per employee per month, on top of the employee's CTC. No setup fees. No entity registration. No local director or chartered accountant on retainer.
The Talent Side
EOR compliance is table
stakes. Any serious India EOR platform handles PF and TDS. Kaamwork's
differentiation is on who you actually hire.
Candidate profiles come in
within 24 hours of a role kickoff. The pool is vetted, with a 65%
interview-to-offer conversion rate. The focus is the top 5% of India's tech
talent, sourced from companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Flipkart.
This matters because
attrition is where offshore models break down. A hire from a generic database
cycles out in 18 months. A hire who went through a rigorous process, gets paid
well, and works directly with your leadership stays longer.
Kaamwork's attrition rate on this model is under 5%. The offshore team industry average runs closer to 25%.
Why
Retention Works Differently Here
Attrition in offshore
teams comes from two places: pay and disconnection.
Pay is fixable. The
overhead savings from not running an India entity, money that would have gone
toward entity setup and ongoing compliance costs, can go into better
compensation for the India team instead. Better appraisals. Faster increments.
CTCs that don't leave people looking elsewhere every 18 months.
Disconnection is subtler.
An engineer getting their product priorities from a country head's summary is
not working for your company. They are working for an offshore vendor. The
psychological contract is different, and the output quality reflects that.
Direct access to US
managers changes the situation. The India engineer knows the product, the
mission, the tradeoffs the team is making. They are not a distant resource
receiving filtered requirements. They are a team member who happened to be
hired in Bangalore instead of Boston.
That combination, better pay and a direct working relationship, is what takes an offshore team from 25% annual attrition to under 5%.
What the $599 Fee Covers
The $599 per employee per
month covers:
●
Employment contract drafting and
signing under Indian law
●
Monthly payroll processing in INR
●
PF and ESIC statutory
contributions
●
TDS computation and remittance
●
State-specific professional tax
filing
●
Annual Form 16 issuance
●
Compliance monitoring as Indian
labor regulations change
●
Termination support when exits
happen
The fee does not cover the
employee's salary. That is agreed separately between you and your hire. The
$599 is the cost of maintaining a legally compliant employment relationship in
India without building the infrastructure yourself.
For context on the alternative: a private limited company in India requires a local director, a registered office address, a company secretary, annual ROC filings, a chartered accountant for monthly compliance, and legal counsel whenever a labor law question comes up. These are recurring costs, not a one-time fee.
Who This Works For
Kaamwork is built for US,
UK, and ANZ tech companies at a specific stage. Product is validated.
Engineering capacity is needed. India hiring makes sense, but spending six
months and up to $150,000 on entity infrastructure does not.
That typically means
seed-to-Series B startups adding their first five to fifteen India engineers.
Companies that have tried contractors and want full-time employment instead.
Founders who want their India team working directly with them, not through a vendor
layer.
At 20 to 25 employees in
India, transitioning to your own entity often starts making financial sense.
Kaamwork supports that transition when the time comes. Until then, the EOR
model gives you a live, compliant, directly connected India team with a 48-hour
setup window.
→ See how the
talent-centric model works: kaam.work/why-kaamwork/talent-centric-model
→ Compare Kaamwork against other EOR platforms: kaam.work/why-kaamwork/kaamwork-vs-competitors
Why the
Timeline Is Actually 48 Hours
Most India hiring is
measured in months. Entity setup: three to six months. Vendor negotiation and
onboarding: four to eight weeks. Hiring through a staffing agency with a
country head layer: another month on top of that.
The 48-hour window is a
structural outcome, not a claim about speed. The employment contract templates
already exist. Statutory registrations are already live. The payroll system
already runs in INR. When you close an offer, there is nothing new to build on
the compliance side. You are hiring into existing infrastructure.
The six-month detour most
companies take is the cost of building that infrastructure from scratch.
Kaamwork's model means you don't have to.
For US and UK companies
that want a real India team, with direct manager relationships and full
statutory compliance, without the entity cost: kaam.work
If you have any doubt related this post, let me know