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Pitch N Hire · Employer of record

Employ in India without an Indian entity.

The honest version of cross-border hiring: we are India-based, so what we can do is employ people for you in India, legally, without you setting up an Indian entity. We do not run entities in your country, and we say so rather than implying otherwise.

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India
the jurisdiction

The employment jurisdiction is India only. We own no overseas entity and employ nobody locally abroad.

Days
not months

Days to a couple of weeks from selecting the person, against the months a subsidiary takes to stand up.

5
statutory obligations handled

Provident fund, ESI where applicable, gratuity, leave entitlements and TDS withholding with year-end filings.

Yours
IP and direction

You direct the work and retain your IP, with assignment written into the employment contracts.

01

What Cross-border expansion is

Employer of record means Pitch N Hire becomes the legal employer in India for the people you select and direct. You pick the person and run the work; we hold the employment relationship, issue compliant contracts under Indian labour law with IP assignment written in, run payroll in rupees with statutory payslips, withhold income tax at source and handle year-end filings.

The statutory work is the part that makes an Indian entity expensive to run: provident fund, employees' state insurance where applicable, gratuity and leave entitlements, kept current as the rules change. The service explicitly names misclassification risk as a reason to use it — moving long-term contractors onto compliant employment is one of the buyer segments it is written for.

It is worth being precise about the difference from a PEO. An employer of record legally employs workers on your behalf in a country where you have no entity; a PEO co-employs staff you hired through your own legal entity. And it is worth being equally precise about scope: this is India. We do not operate offices, employ people locally or run an employer-of-record entity in other countries, and we would rather lose the enquiry than pretend we do.

02

What it does

What being the legal employer actually involves, item by item.

01

Compliant employment contracts

Contracts under Indian labour law, including IP assignment to you — which is the clause that makes the difference between employing a person and buying an ambiguous outcome.

02

Payroll in rupees

Salary paid in INR with statutory payslips, income tax withheld at source, and year-end filings completed. The people you hire are paid the way Indian employees expect to be paid.

03

Statutory contributions

Provident fund, employees' state insurance where applicable, gratuity and leave entitlements — administered and kept current as rules change, which they do, and by state.

04

Misclassification remediation

A named use case: moving long-term contractors onto compliant employment. Where the relationship has become employment in substance, continuing to treat it as contracting is the exposure this closes.

05

Sourcing, where you need it

Employment and supply are separable. Where you already know who you want to hire, this is employment only; where you do not, staff augmentation finds and vets them and this employs them.

06

An exit that is planned rather than discovered

An employer of record suits testing a market, small teams and fast hiring. Once your India headcount justifies the cost and ongoing compliance overhead of a subsidiary, the right answer is your own entity — and we will say when that point is.

03

How it runs

Five steps from decision to a person on payroll.

  1. Scope the roles and the terms

    Which roles, what compensation structure, what the contracts need to say about IP and confidentiality, and whether any of it interacts with an existing contractor relationship.

  2. Select the person

    You choose, whether from your own pipeline or from a shortlist we source. The hiring decision is not ours and does not become ours.

  3. Issue the employment contract

    A compliant Indian employment contract with IP assignment, signed by the employee and by us as legal employer, with you named as the party directing the work.

  4. Onboard and run payroll

    Onboarding into your tools and processes, then rupee payroll with statutory payslips, TDS withholding and the statutory contributions administered on schedule.

  5. Scale, or hand over

    Add or release headcount as the team changes, and plan the move to your own entity when the headcount justifies it rather than when a contract term forces it.

04

Who it is for

Four situations, and one of them is a risk-reduction exercise rather than a growth one.

Companies testing the Indian market

Where the question is whether an India team works at all, and incorporating first means spending the answer's budget on finding out.

Teams hiring a handful of people

Small teams where a subsidiary's setup cost, time and ongoing compliance overhead would exceed the value of the roles being filled.

Teams converting long-term contractors

Where a contractor relationship has become employment in substance, and continuing as it is carries misclassification exposure that grows with every month.

Engineering leaders building an offshore team

Where the engineers are in India and the company is not, and the employment relationship is the missing piece rather than the recruitment.

05

What it does not do

The most important limit on this page is the first one, and it is a correction.

  • We cannot employ people outside India on our own entity. Pitch N Hire is India-based, owns no overseas entity and employs nobody locally abroad — so "hire in any country without an entity" is not a service we offer, however often it is written that way.
  • This is not a PEO. An employer of record legally employs on your behalf where you have no entity; a PEO co-employs staff you hired through your own legal entity. If you already have an Indian company, the arrangement you need is different.
  • Finding the engineers in the first place is a separate service, though the two are frequently bought together. Staff augmentation →
  • Statutory obligations differ by state and change. We administer them and keep them current; we do not give legal advice, and a specific position should be confirmed with a qualified advisor or the relevant authority.
  • It stops being the right instrument at scale. Past a certain headcount your own subsidiary is cheaper, and we would rather tell you that than keep billing.
06

Answers

Is it legal to hire in India through an employer of record?

Yes. The provider becomes the legal employer in India and manages compliant contracts, payroll, tax and statutory obligations on your behalf, while you direct the work.

How fast can we hire?

Days to a couple of weeks once you have selected the person, against the months a subsidiary takes. The speed is the main reason the model exists.

Do we lose control of the work or our IP?

No. You direct the work and retain your IP — IP assignment is written into the employment contracts, which is the point of using a compliant contract rather than an informal arrangement.

Can you employ people for us outside India?

No. We are India-based and do not operate offices or entities in other countries. If you need employment in another jurisdiction, we will tell you that this is not the right supplier rather than sell it anyway.

When should we set up our own Indian entity instead?

Once your India headcount is large enough to justify the cost, the time and the ongoing compliance overhead of running a subsidiary. Below that, an employer of record is usually cheaper and always faster.

How is this different from staff augmentation?

Staff augmentation supplies and vets the talent; the employer of record legally employs them. They are frequently bought together — one finds the person, the other holds the employment relationship.