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.
Why Bengaluru
Cost is the reason people look. Talent is the reason they stay
Companies usually start this conversation with a budget problem. They finish it having realised the more interesting fact: for a lot of roles, the Bengaluru market simply has more qualified people available than their home market does.
Why Bengaluru
The cheapest place to hire is rarely the right one
Bengaluru is where India's deepest engineering market, its largest concentration of global capability centres and a mature support ecosystem of lawyers, accountants and payroll providers happen to sit in the same city. That combination is what makes a small centre viable, not just a large one.
Talent
1.5M+
Technology professionals in the metro area, with genuine depth in cloud, data engineering, applied AI, platform and QA. For most stacks you are choosing between candidates rather than waiting for one.
Ecosystem
1,700+
Global capability centres now operate in India, with Bengaluru holding the largest share. The practical benefit is boring and valuable: 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 genuine second shift on support and release work; teams that pretend the time zone does not exist get frustrated. 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 you before they ask us.
Market figures are indicative and change year to year. We cite current sources in the underlying model we share with you.
Where the savings actually come from
The headline number people quote is salary, but that is only part of it. Compare a fully loaded seat and the picture is more useful: salary, statutory contributions, insurance, workspace, equipment and recruitment cost. Bengaluru is materially cheaper on every line except good senior engineers, where the market has tightened and you should expect to pay properly.
- Salary: the largest gap, and it narrows sharply at staff and principal level.
- Employer contributions: provident fund, gratuity and insurance are real costs, but far below US healthcare or Western European social charges.
- Workspace: managed desks in good Bengaluru buildings cost a fraction of comparable space in London or the Bay Area, and you can rent them by the seat.
- Recruitment: a deeper candidate pool means shorter searches, which is a cost most people forget to count.
And where it does not work
An honest page needs this section. A Bengaluru team is a poor fit when the work requires constant real-time collaboration with a US West Coast team, when your product knowledge lives in two people's heads and nobody has time to transfer it, or when you need one generalist rather than a team. In those cases the time zone and the onboarding cost eat the savings, and we will tell you so on the first call rather than after you have signed.
Where we focus
Teams we know how to hire for
We stay narrow on purpose. These are the skill markets we track in Bengaluru, with live salary bands and a sense of who is actually available.
AI and applied ML
Model and pipeline engineers, evaluation and annotation teams, MLOps and inference cost work. Useful when your US or EU team is small and every hire has to be senior.
Blockchain and Web3
Protocol and smart contract engineers, node and infrastructure operations, wallet and integration work. Compliance and key-handling controls designed in from the first contract.
Data and analytics
Data engineering, warehouse and pipeline ownership, BI and reporting, analytics engineering. One of the easiest functions to run from India because the work is measurable and asynchronous.
SaaS engineering and support
Product engineering pods, QA and release, plus tiered customer and technical support that covers your European morning and the hours your US team is asleep.
Manufacturing shared services
Design and CAD support, production engineering, supplier quality documentation, and the back-office functions that sit alongside them: procurement support, order management and finance operations.
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.