If you’re building a tech team in India, and you’ve decided not to set up a local entity just yet, you’ve probably already explored the Employer of Record (EOR) route.
Most EORs handle what’s required to employ someone locally: contracts, payroll, statutory deductions, benefits and insurance.
What gets missed, and what ends up slowing down your India expansion plans, is the operational layer.
Once the offer is signed, someone still has to coordinate background checks, make sure notice period engagement doesn’t drop, follow up on hardware or home office setup if it’s remote, and manage small but critical execution steps.
Founders often end up being that someone – chasing status updates, fixing delays, or handling reimbursements that should have been resolved by a local partner.
The problem is: most EORs aren’t built to follow through on the day-to-day operational work that makes onboarding seamless and keeps engineers confident in the decision to join (especially during the long notice periods).
This guide walks through how to evaluate EOR services in India with that lens in mind. What most EORs do well. Where gaps tend to show up. And what to clarify if you’re hiring engineers who are expected to deliver from day one, without requiring you to handle India operations yourself.
What a standard EOR provider is responsible for (in India)
Most EOR platforms operating in India are built to handle the legal and payroll infrastructure that lets you employ someone locally without setting up an entity. Here’s what that typically includes:
1. Employment contracts
The EOR drafts and issues an India-compliant employment contract on your behalf. These contracts cover:
- Compensation structure (including variable and fixed components)
- Notice period (usually 30 days)
- Leave entitlements (sick, earned, casual)
- Statutory obligations like Provident Fund (PF) and gratuity
Most platforms use standard templates unless specific modifications are requested.
2. Onboarding
Once the offer is accepted, the EOR collects:
- Collecting documents like PAN and Aadhaar
- Bank details
- Local address and emergency contacts
- Background verification and experience certificate from the previous employer
These are necessary for payroll processing and registration with government agencies.
3. Statutory compliance
The EOR is responsible for registering and maintaining the employee under India’s core statutory frameworks:
- Provident Fund (PF): a mandatory retirement savings scheme
- National Pension System (NPS): optional, typically included only if specifically requested by the employee
- Professional Tax: levied by some state governments
- Labour Welfare Fund: in applicable states
These filings are handled in the backend, with minimal engagement required from you or the engineer.
4. Payroll and tax processing
Each month, the EOR:
- Runs payroll based on the employment contract
- Deducts and remits income tax (TDS) and statutory contributions
- Issues digital payslips
- Provides Form 16 at the end of the financial year for tax filing
Delays are rare, but visibility into pay dates or deductions may vary by provider.
5. Benefits and leave policy
Engineers are enrolled in group insurance and mapped to a standard leave policy. This usually includes:
- A health insurance policy (coverage varies widely – from ₹3L to ₹30L)
- Statutory leaves (and sometimes additional floating leave or holiday buyouts)
- Gratuity tracking, usually accrued but not relevant until 5+ years of tenure
- Meals card
Customizations like top-up insurance or higher coverage may not be standard.
6. Exit compliance
If the engineer resigns or is terminated, the EOR handles:
- Full and Final settlement (including leave encashment and gratuity if applicable)
- Severance in case of termination/layoffs
- Exit documentation
- Revocation of statutory benefits
- Filing of Form 16 and relieving letters as per Indian HR norms
What founders should still clarify before choosing an EOR partner
When onboarding stretches across cities, notice periods, and unfamiliar systems, the real gaps tend to show up.
Offer to Day 1: Will you know what’s moving?
Most EORs begin onboarding promptly after offer acceptance, but that doesn’t always mean engineers can join quickly. With many EOR setups, there’s typically a built-in delay, often a week or two, before the employment letter is issued and onboarding can formally begin.
In a market like India, where immediate joiners are common and speed matters, this lag can create real setbacks, especially for critical or replacement roles.
That early window is also where engagement risk builds. Most EORs don’t run ongoing check-ins or keep the founder updated. The responsibility to track engagement, and step in if something feels off, can fall back on the internal team.
The same is true for background verification. It’s included in most EOR agreements, but it often requires multiple rounds of follow-up. Founders aren’t always looped in unless they ask, and delays here can slow down onboarding readiness.
Hardware logistics are usually handled as an add-on. While the device cost is expected to be covered by the employer, most EORs also apply a service charge for procurement. These additional fees, and the coordination involved, are not always scoped upfront.
What to clarify:
- Will someone follow up with the engineer during the notice period? Are there check-ins built in, or will you need to step in if things go quiet?
- How will background verification be handled, and will you be kept in the loop if there’s back-and-forth?
- If hardware is needed, is it included by default, or does it come at an additional service charge? Who handles delays, replacements, or tracking?
Support and escalations: What happens when something slips?
Most EORs are built to run in the background. That works until it doesn’t. An insurance claim gets stuck. A PF number isn’t activated. A reimbursement gets rejected because of a document mismatch, and no one follows up unless the engineer pushes.
In setups like this, support is ticketed, slow, and often unclear about who owns what. Very few platforms offer India-specific escalation paths or real-time updates for issues that matter locally.
Clarify:
- Is there a way to flag unresolved tickets beyond the engineer?
- Will you be informed if an issue lingers, or is that visibility on you?
- Do they resolve India-specific blockers, or just log them?
You don’t need hand-holding. But if the engineer doesn’t know who to ask, or you only find out when frustration builds, support isn’t doing its job.
Admin and local support: What’s included, and what lands back on you?
Standard EORs support remote employment by default. If your engineer requests a co-working space or if your team scales into a physical office, coordination can get murky. Some EORs have workspace tie-ups, but these are usually optional add-ons, not default inclusions. It’s up to the company to request, pay for, and sometimes follow up on the setup.
Founders also tend to assume that local operational needs, like issuing employment letters for visa or loan applications or assisting with reimbursement workflows, will be taken care of – which is never included in the standard EOR engagement.
Reimbursements are usually portal-based, but local expenses are manually handled in most cases – company credit cards aren’t issued, and local support is minimal unless explicitly arranged.
What to clarify:
- If the engineer can’t or doesn’t want to work from home, will the EOR help set up a co-working space? How is it billed and who coordinates?
- For in-person visits (e.g., execs traveling to India or local travel by engineers), who handles logistics and expense coordination?
- Is there documentation support built in for employees and India visits from senior execs (for home loans/car loans)?
Zooming out: What the EOR decision is really about
By now, you’ve seen the boxes most EORs check. What matters is who takes ownership once the offer is signed, and whether your team in India can move without you holding the threads.
You’re choosing the layer that sits between you and your engineers – the one responsible for onboarding coordination, candidate experience, and operational follow-through. This has a direct impact on how your engineers experience your company, from offer to onboarding and beyond.
What to ask yourself before you choose an EOR partner:
- Will this partner reduce your follow-ups, or create more invisible coordination work?
- Do they stay involved beyond contract dispatch, when onboarding actually plays out?
- Will engineers feel supported, or left figuring things out alone?
- Is this just a compliance vendor, or a real bridge into the India expansion motion I’m trying to build?
On to you
Choosing the right EOR partner boils down to the fundamental question: is the engagement model designed to take the execution load off your plate, or whether that coordination will still come back to you?
That’s the real difference. Some EORs are built for scale and standardization, and they do that well. But if you’re running a lean team, hiring remotely, and expecting your first India engineers to ship from week one, a transactional setup leaves gaps you can’t afford to patch later.
That’s what TeemGenie was built to own, end to end.
We step in to take complete operational responsibility for what actually matters once the offer is signed.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Onboarding visibility from offer to Day 1: founders and engineers are kept in the loop throughout the notice period, with clear handoffs and status updates.
- Workspace and equipment setup handled locally, including delivery confirmation, co-working arrangements, and fast replacements when needed.
- 30 lakh medical insurance, term and accidental insurance included from day one – not as an upgrade, but as the baseline, alongside financial wellness and flexible leave.
- Real-time support for PF and payroll issues escalated and resolved by an on-ground team, not a ticketing system.
- On-ground HR and infrastructure support, including travel, local compliance queries, and in-person engagement where needed.
- Retention-first benefits stack, structured compensation, explained perks, and engagement touchpoints that don’t leave engineers guessing.
- Complete ownership without an entity: you make the hiring decisions, and we handle the rest, seamlessly, and without the overhead.
Book a 30-minute, no-strings-attached call with our India Expansion experts to see how we can support your team.