Global Capability Centre

Build your India strategy. We make it real.

A capability centre you own outright — entity, compliance, leadership and a hiring engine that keeps running after we leave. Your first people start in weeks, while incorporation happens in parallel.

Scope a GCC Not ready for one? Start with a pod

Weeksto your first hires, via the EOR bridge

4–6months to a registered, payroll-running entity

Oneaccountable lead across strategy, entity and hiring

Yoursentity, IP and people at the end of it

Why build one

Rent capability, or own it.

A pod is the right answer for a problem. A capability centre is the right answer for a permanent function you intend to run for years.

The deepest operator pool available

India produces senior finance, data, product and engineering operators at a volume no other market matches. The constraint has never been supply — it is knowing who is good, and hiring them repeatedly.

Your entity, your IP, your culture

An outsourced team is someone else's employees working on your problem. A capability centre is your company: your contracts, your IP assignment, your people on your payroll, your culture.

Economics that improve as you grow

Setup cost is front-loaded and fixed. Per-head cost falls as headcount rises, which is the opposite shape to a per-employee vendor fee. There is a crossover point, and we will tell you honestly where yours sits.

The timeline

From zero to operational.

Incorporation is slow and hiring is not — so we run them in parallel instead of in sequence. These are typical windows; your plan is dated in the engagement.

Week 0–2

Bridge, so hiring does not wait

Entity incorporation takes months; your first hires should not. We onboard the first people under an employer-of-record arrangement while incorporation runs in parallel, then transfer them onto your payroll once the entity is live.

Hiring brief agreed and the search opened
EOR arrangement in place for the first cohort
Incorporation filed

Month 0–3

Leadership and foundations

The first hire that matters is the person who will run the centre. Everything else — office, infrastructure, the first senior cohort — is sequenced behind that decision, not ahead of it.

Centre lead hired and in seat
Registrations progressing: PAN, TAN, GST, PF, ESIC
Workspace and IT operational
First three to five senior hires onboarded

Month 3–6

Entity live, team scaling

The entity takes over. Payroll, compliance and statutory filings run in-house on a published calendar, and the EOR cohort transfers across without anyone changing desks.

Entity registered and payroll running
EOR employees transitioned to your payroll
Team scaled into double figures
Operating rhythm and reporting cadence established

Month 6+

You run it. We step back.

The measure of the engagement is that it ends. We move to an advisory footing, and your centre lead owns hiring, delivery and governance with a functioning engine behind them.

Hiring engine sustaining a steady monthly intake
Governance and reporting owned internally
OnRole in advisory support, not the critical path

The decisions that matter

Four calls made early, or paid for later.

Decision 01

Which function goes first

Sequencing decides whether the centre earns trust or spends two years defending itself. The right first function has clear outputs, a named onshore counterpart and work that does not stall across time zones.

Decision 02

Which city

Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, NCR and the tier-two cities differ in salary bands, attrition, commute realities and the depth of the specific function you are hiring. The right answer follows the function, not the brochure.

Decision 03

Who leads it

A centre led by a coordinator becomes a service desk. A centre led by an operator becomes a capability. This is the hire to spend the most time on and the one we start first.

Decision 04

What the operating model is

Extension of the onshore team, or an owned function with its own P&L accountability? Both work. Deciding late is what does not — it shows up as duplicated management and unclear ownership.

What we run

Seven modules. One accountable lead.

Take the whole engagement or the parts you do not already have. The hiring engine is the one most companies underestimate.

Strategy and business case

Function sequencing, city selection, headcount plan, cost model and the crossover analysis against your current arrangement — before anything is committed.

Entity and incorporation

Structure, incorporation, statutory registrations and the director requirements, run to a dated plan rather than a vague timeline.

Compliance and payroll

PF, ESIC, professional tax, TDS and GST set up correctly the first time, with a filing calendar that keeps running after we leave.

Leadership search

The centre lead and the first senior cohort. Sourced, assessed and closed by people who have run these functions themselves.

The hiring engine

Not a one-off drive — a repeatable pipeline with defined scorecards, interview loops and a monthly intake your team can sustain without us.

Workplace and IT

Office or managed workspace, devices, access, security posture and the vendor contracts underneath them.

Operating rhythm and handover

The review cadence, reporting pack and governance that make the centre legible from onshore — then a documented transition to your own leadership.

The honest comparison

Incorporating is the easy part. Any firm can file it.

The centre that fails is rarely the one with a bad entity structure. It is the one that could not hire consistently after the first cohort.

Approach	What it gives you	What it misses
Big-four advisory	A thorough strategy document and a compliance workplan	The hiring. The deck is not the constraint — sustained recruitment at quality is
Doing it yourself	Full control and no advisory fee	Twelve to eighteen months of founder attention, and the first bad senior hire costs more than the engagement
Offshore outsourcing	Fast capacity with no setup	Ownership. Their employees, their IP position, their margin, and a switching cost that grows every year
OnRole GCC	Strategy, entity, compliance and a working hiring engine in one accountable engagement	It is a commitment. Below a certain headcount a pod is the better answer — we will say so

Is it the right move

A GCC is not always the answer.

Below a certain scale it is an expensive way to buy something a pod already gives you. We would rather tell you that now.

Build one if

A three-to-five year plan for India, not an experiment
Enough sustained work to justify twenty or more people over time
Functions where continuity and context compound — data, finance, product, engineering
A willingness to hire a real leader, not a coordinator

Do not, if

Fewer than ten roles, with no plan to grow past it
Purely project work with a defined end date
Cost arbitrage as the only motive — that is a vendor conversation, not a centre
No onshore sponsor with authority to make decisions

Where it sits

Three levels of commitment.

Most companies arrive at a centre through a pod. Proving the function first is cheaper than proving it with an entity.

Model	Commitment	Time to start	Best at	Who employs the team
Fractional Pod	Lowest	Days	One named problem, senior judgement, no fixed payroll	OnRole employs the team
Dedicated Pod	Medium	Weeks	A whole function, working only for you, embedded in your tools	OnRole employs the team
GCC	Highest	Weeks via EOR, entity in 4–6 months	A permanent capability at scale, owned outright	You employ the team

See engagement options

Common questions

What people ask before committing.

How long does the entity actually take?

Incorporation and the statutory registrations typically run four to six months end to end, depending on structure and how quickly documentation comes back from your side. Hiring does not wait for it — the EOR bridge means your first people are working within weeks.

Do we need an Indian resident director?

Yes. Indian company law requires at least one director resident in India. We work through the options with you — a founding team member relocating, the centre lead once hired, or a nominee arrangement as an interim step — and flag the governance trade-off in each.

What happens to the EOR employees?

They transfer onto your entity's payroll once it is live, on continuous service terms. Same people, same work, same manager — the change is contractual, not operational.

Can we start with a pod and convert later?

That is the most common path. A pod proves the function and the working relationship at low commitment; when headcount and duration justify it, the pod becomes the nucleus of the centre and the engagement converts.

Who owns the IP?

You do, from the first day. Employment contracts and the EOR arrangement both assign IP to your entity. This is one of the main reasons companies build a centre rather than outsource.

What happens when the engagement ends?

That is the point of it. We move to advisory support once your centre lead owns hiring, compliance and delivery. No lock-in, no dependency on us for the centre to keep functioning.

Get started

Start with one problem. Not a hiring plan.

A short sprint tells you more about the work than three rounds of interviews.

Build a pod See engagement options