Set up the centre
The right structure, then the ground under it: EOR or incorporation, payroll, workspace, laptops, VPN, and the policies auditors ask for. Local follow-through, not a remote shared inbox.
Global Capability Centres · Bengaluru, India
Your India team, without building a company first
ContextDelta helps small and mid-sized companies in the US and Europe stand up engineering, data and support teams in Bengaluru. A founder on the ground will tell you the truth about cost, hiring, and whether India is the right move this year.
40-60%
Typical fully loaded cost saving against an equivalent US or Western European team. Modelled for your roles on the call.
4-6 weeks
Realistic path from signed brief to a first hire onboarded under an Employer of Record, if your team can interview.
1.5M+
Technology professionals in the Bengaluru metro. Enough depth for a small centre, not only a large one.
Founder
Anupam Tandon runs the work from Bengaluru. No account-manager relay. Specialist partners for regulated filings.
Figures are indicative planning ranges. We model your actual roles, locations and compliance costs during the discovery call.
What we do
Everything between the decision and a working team
You keep the product and the technical direction. Someone in Bengaluru handles entity, employment, hiring, and compliance, and picks up the phone when something stalls.
Hire and keep the team
Roles written for the team you will need, live Bengaluru salary bands, panels with your engineers, and retention after day one. The first five hires shape who says yes later.
Stay compliant and governed
IP assigned to you, filings on a calendar, data controls your customers will ask about, and exit terms agreed before you start. Regulated pieces go to named partners. You still have one accountable person.
Why Bengaluru
The cheapest place to hire is rarely the right one
Bengaluru has India's deepest engineering market, a large share of global capability centres, and a mature support ecosystem of lawyers, accountants and payroll providers in one city. That mix is what makes a small centre workable.
Cost
40-60%
Indicative saving on the fully loaded cost of an equivalent US or Western European engineer, once salary, statutory contributions, workspace and equipment are counted. Senior and niche roles compress that gap. Volume roles widen it.
Talent
1.5M+
Technology professionals in the metro area, with real depth in cloud, data engineering, applied AI, platform and QA. For most stacks you can choose between candidates.
Ecosystem
1,700+
Global capability centres now operate in India, with Bengaluru holding the largest share. The practical benefit is simple: proven playbooks, managed office space by the desk, and vendors who have done this before.
Hours that actually overlap
India Standard Time gives you a working afternoon shared with Europe and an early-morning handover to the US East Coast. Teams that plan for it get a useful second shift on support and release work. We design the working pattern with you before the first hire.
Contracts, IP and data
English-language contracts, a common-law legal system, enforceable IP assignment in employment agreements, and a data protection regime under the DPDP Act that can be mapped to your GDPR commitments. These are the questions your customers will ask.
Market figures are indicative and change year to year. We cite current sources in the underlying model we share with you.
Three ways in
Pick the model that matches your risk appetite
Most companies start light and convert later. Nothing here should lock you into a structure you will regret at fifteen people.
Fastest start
Employer of Record
Your people are employed compliantly in India through an established employer while you direct the work day to day. No Indian entity to unwind if the plan changes.
- Best for one to fifteen people, or testing the market
- Time to first hire four to six weeks
- You provide the roles and the technical direction
- Exit convert to your own entity, or stop with notice
Most common route
Build · Operate · Transfer
We build the team and run the operation for an agreed period, then transfer the entity, contracts and people to you at a price and date fixed at the start.
- Best for ten to fifty people with a long-term plan
- Typical horizon eighteen to thirty-six months to transfer
- You provide the roadmap and engineering leadership
- Exit transfer terms written into the first contract
Full control
Your own capability centre
You incorporate the Indian subsidiary and own it from day one. We run setup, hire the founding team, and stay as long as useful, or hand over at go-live.
- Best for committed roadmaps and IP-sensitive work
- Time to operating three to six months including incorporation
- You provide the entity, capital and mandate
- Exit our involvement ends whenever you say so
Where we focus
Teams we know how to hire for
We stay narrow on purpose. These are the skill markets we track in Bengaluru: live salary bands, real notice periods, and a clear read on who is free to join.
AI & Applied ML
Model and pipeline engineers, evaluation and annotation teams, MLOps and inference cost work. A fit when your US or EU team is small and each Bengaluru hire needs to work as a senior, with light day-to-day oversight.
Blockchain & Web3
Protocol and smart contract engineers, node and infrastructure ops, wallet and integration work. Compliance and key-handling go into the first contracts. We hire against live Bengaluru bands and known notice windows.
Data & Analytics
Data engineering, warehouse and pipeline ownership, BI and analytics engineering. A strong fit for India: measurable output, async delivery, and senior owners who talk straight to your business stakeholders.
SaaS Engineering & Support
Product engineering pods, QA and release, plus tiered customer and technical support across European mornings and US off-hours. Senior people who own outcomes, priced and paced for how Bengaluru works.
Cloud, Platform & SRE
Site Reliability Engineering, Kubernetes orchestration, cloud architecture on AWS, GCP and Azure, and CI/CD automation. Built for 24/7 reliability, incident response and infrastructure cost control during European mornings and the hours your US team is offline.
How we operate
Lean on purpose, so a small centre stays possible
A traditional consultancy sells discovery phases and decks. A fifty-person software company usually needs something simpler: a few good hires in Bengaluru, employed legally, paid on time, and looked after well enough that they are still there in two years.
So we run without a bench. No account-manager layer funding itself on your invoice. The founder does the work. Specialist partners handle regulated pieces. You see what everything costs.
That is how a structure that works at five people can still work at fifty, and why you get a committed person in Bengaluru instead of a chain of handoffs.
What we take off your desk
- Choosing between EOR, BOT and your own entity
- Incorporation, registrations and bank account setup
- Employment contracts with IP assignment and notice terms
- Payroll, statutory contributions and monthly filings
- Salary benchmarking, sourcing and interview panels
- Onboarding, training plans and probation reviews
- Workspace, laptops, VPN and access control
- Culture, one-to-ones and retention before attrition starts
You keep what you should keep: technical direction, performance decisions and who joins your team.
Leadership
Anupam Tandon
Founder · Based in Bengaluru, working with US & European teams
Twenty years in technology and entrepreneurship: building products, running delivery, hiring engineers in India, and carrying payroll when the month ends. That last part is the job. Most capability centres struggle on the first five hires and on whether someone local stays accountable when hiring, compliance, or a vendor goes sideways.
I started ContextDelta because advice for a fifty-person company in Boston or Berlin is often written for a much larger firm. You do not need a transformation programme. You need someone in Bengaluru who will pick up the phone, tell you what a good senior engineer costs this quarter, and then hire one, or tell you to wait.
Every engagement is run by me. When the work needs a specialist (incorporation, employment law, transfer pricing, payroll filings), it goes to a named partner firm here in the city, and I stay accountable for the outcome.
What you can expect
This is a new firm. You will not find client logos or testimonials here. Collecting them before the work is done would not tell you much that is true.
What you get instead:
- The founder on every call. Not a salesperson handing you off.
- Salary bands and vendor quotes shown at cost, with our fee stated separately.
- A written plan before you commit money, including what could go wrong.
- Named partners for anything legal, statutory, or regulated.
- Exit terms agreed at the start, not when you want to leave.
Early clients get founder attention that will not scale forever, and pricing that reflects it. That is the honest trade, and why someone in Bengaluru can still sit with you on the details.
Field Notes
Practical notes on building in India
Short pieces on models, hiring and the unglamorous work that makes a small centre succeed.
September 2026 · 7 min read
First five Bengaluru hires matter most
EOR vs entity is important, but the first five people set the culture, the hiring bar and whether good candidates say yes. Here is how to choose them.
August 2026 · 8 min read
How to choose EOR, BOT or your entity
If you run a fifty-person software company in the United States or Europe and you are considering hiring in India, the first real decision is the legal shape of the arrangement.
Thinking about India? Test the idea with someone on the ground
Twenty minutes with Anupam in Bengaluru, then a written note covering the roles, the realistic cost, the model that fits, and what could go wrong. No fee, and no obligation afterwards.