International
United States
US companies hiring in India are my most common international engagement, and the mistakes are remarkably consistent from company to company.
What makes the US market different
The most frequent one is classification. Engineers are engaged as contractors because that is administratively simpler, and the arrangement holds until it does not — usually when the team reaches fifteen or twenty people, has been working full-time under direction for two years, and the classification no longer stands up. Unwinding it retrospectively is expensive, and it applies to everyone engaged on the same basis, not just whoever raised the question.
The second is salary structure. Indian compensation is built from components — basic, allowances, statutory contributions — and each drives a different obligation. A single consolidated figure, which is normal in the US, creates provident fund and gratuity consequences that surface later, and restructuring downward is very difficult without an employee-relations problem because it reads as a pay cut.
The third is the employment contract. A US template will be signed and will not do what you expect. At-will employment does not translate. Non-compete clauses face significant limits on enforceability in India. Notice periods work differently and are frequently longer. Statutory benefits apply regardless of what the contract says.
The fourth, and the one that catches companies later, is data. India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act imposes obligations on employee and candidate data processed in India, and a US privacy framework does not cover the India position.
None of these are difficult to get right at the first hire. All of them are difficult and costly to correct at the fiftieth.
To be clear about scope: I advise on Indian employment practice, not US employment law. You have counsel for that. What most US companies lack is the India-side equivalent.
What I do for US employers
- Employee versus contractor classification review, and remediation where it no longer holds
- Employment contracts drafted for Indian law rather than adapted from a US template
- Salary structuring done correctly from the first offer
- PF, ESI, professional tax and Shops & Establishment registration at the right thresholds
- POSH Internal Committee constituted at ten employees, with the external member seat
- Employer of Record versus own-entity advice, with the actual trade-offs
- Your first India HR hire — defined, sourced, assessed and supervised
- DPDP Act review of employee and candidate data held in India
Most relevant here
India Entry — HR & Employment Setup
For overseas companies hiring their first employees in India. Entity-side HR, contracts, payroll structure and compliance, advised online.
Global Capability Centre — HR Setup
People infrastructure for multinationals standing up a captive GCC in India.
Leadership & Specialist Hiring
Retained search for the senior and hard-to-fill roles, run by someone who has hired over a thousand people.
DPDP Act Compliance for HR Data
Employee and candidate data is personal data. Most HR functions are not set up for that.
HR in US — common questions
Can we hire Indian engineers as contractors?
You can, and many companies start that way. The risk is that the classification stops reflecting reality — full-time hours, working under direction, integrated into your team, no other clients. Where that is the case, the contractor label does not protect you, and the exposure includes back-dated statutory contributions. It is a reasonable arrangement for genuinely independent short-term work and a poor one for what is actually employment.
How does the time difference work for advisory?
Most of the work is asynchronous — documents, policies, review, written advice. Calls are scheduled into US working hours, which for India means evening. In practice the time difference affects very little.
Do we need an Indian entity, or can we use an Employer of Record?
An EOR is sensible for the first handful of hires and removes the setup burden entirely. It becomes expensive per head as you scale and limits your control over terms, equity and culture. Most companies cross over somewhere between ten and twenty-five people, depending on how central India is to their plans.
Are non-compete agreements enforceable in India?
Post-employment restraints on trade face significant limits on enforceability in India, and a non-compete drafted with US enforceability in mind is likely to be substantially less effective here. Confidentiality and non-solicitation obligations stand on considerably firmer ground and are where protection is better placed.
Elsewhere
International