Your own engineering center in India
With a team working in it long before the paperwork matters. We hire and hold the team, run everything around it, and help you set up your own company when you want one. You direct the engineering from the first week.
Everything an engineering center in India needs, and who carries each part.
The team, the workplace, and everything that keeps them running is ours. The company is yours, and we do the India-side work alongside your counsel.
The company
The people
The place
The work
Nothing on this list is left for you to find out about later. What is yours is yours from the first week and stays that way, whether the team sits on our company or your own.
Four phases, and the third one is yours to take, not ours to run.
The first two are work. The third is a decision, and it is entirely yours. The fourth only happens once you have made it.
The team starts
About four weeks from go-ahead to engineers working in your repositories and your process, employed by our Indian company. You direct the work from the first week. Nothing has to be registered, signed or set up in India for this to begin.
A working team and delivery you can measure.
The center takes shape
Over the following months the team grows to the size the plan calls for. Workspace, IT, security and the delivery rhythm settle around it.
A functioning engineering center, operating as your extension, on our entity.
You decide to own it
This is a decision, not a piece of work, and it is yours alone. Some clients take it before we start. Some take it in year three. Some never take it, and keep the center on our books indefinitely.
Nothing about the first two phases changes while you think about it. The team keeps working, you keep directing it, and no part of the arrangement quietly hardens against a decision you have not made yet.
A clear answer, taken on your timing, with a working center either way.
Your company is set up, and the team moves into it
About three months from your decision to a registered company. Your counsel incorporates it and we work alongside them, with the chartered accountant, company secretary and employment counsel we bring to it, on the India-side detail. The company is yours from the day it exists. There is nothing of ours to hand over, because we never held it.
Then the team moves across. Employment relationships, operating practices, records. The people, the work in flight and your direction of it do not change. Monday looks like Friday did.
Your own company in India, with a working engineering center already inside it.
The part nobody budgets for is the part that never stops.
Filings arrive on their own schedule, in a jurisdiction whose deadlines are not the ones your finance team knows. Payroll runs monthly whether or not anyone has time for it. Being an employer in India carries duties that arrive without being asked for.
None of it is a project that finishes.
The harder half is the part you cannot see from your own office.
A team in India, run from your time zone with nobody of yours on the ground, is straightforward to start and difficult to hold. People decide to leave weeks before anyone says so, and nothing in a status meeting shows it. Hiring stalls for reasons that never reach you. A market you are not watching moves, and you find out from your delivery dates.
By the time any of it is visible from where you sit, it has already taken a quarter out of your plan, and the next one is a different problem you also could not have written down in advance.
What closes that gap is somebody senior on the ground whose job is the team rather than the sprint. You keep directing the work. We keep the team together, in the market where that has to be done.
While the team is on our company, none of this reaches yours. When your own company takes it over, it moves across with everything else, and if you would rather it didn't, we keep running it.
If owning the company is even a maybe, say so at the start.
Four things then get set up differently from the first month. None of them is wasted if you never do it, and all four are hard to retrofit later.
Employment terms written to be assignable
People move into your company rather than being re-hired into it. Re-hiring is where handovers lose people, because it turns a move into a job offer anyone can decline.
Your employee and HR policies from the start
Leave, working norms, review cycles, benefits structure, aligned to what you already use. On the day the company is yours, nobody moves into a different regime.
Knowledge in your documentation, not in our heads
The test we hold ourselves to is whether the center keeps running the week after we step back.
Nothing running on tooling only we can operate
Nothing on our side has to be unpicked later, because nothing important was ever on our side.
There are three places this ends up.
You can start in any of them and move later. What separates them is who holds the team, and who runs the back office around it.
Our company, we run it
Most clients start hereNo Indian entity of yours, no statutory exposure, nothing on your balance sheet. We employ, we run the compliance and the workplace, you direct the work. Most clients run this way, and plenty never want anything else.
Your company, you run it
When you want it in-houseYour own entity in India, formed by your counsel with our help, with the team already inside it. You carry the employment and the compliance from that point. We stay as the engineering side, or we step back entirely.
Your company, we run it
Own it without staffing itYou own the entity, we keep payroll, compliance, facilities and HR. Common when the reason for owning it is a customer contract or a board decision rather than a wish to run an India back office.
Where you start from does not decide which one you end in.
Some clients arrive with a board decision already taken. Some arrive with a contract that requires a local entity. Some arrive with a team another supplier holds today, and the work is moving those people and what they know into something you own. All three routes end in one of the three above.
What we would actually recommend: unless a contract or a board decision already forces the entity, start with the first and decide later. It is the cheapest way to find out whether you want either of the others.
Starting on one does not commit you to it. These are contract terms, not different products, and moving between them does not mean rebuilding anything. If you are not sure which one you are in, the four situations clients arrive with is a shorter read.
Incorporation is a solved problem. Keeping the team together is not.
Payroll, statutory filings, facilities, IT provisioning, hiring, employee policy: we run all of it, every month, for teams we already hold. That is not advice about operating in India, it is our operating week.
A professional-services firm can tell you what the obligations are. We can tell you which ones actually take up a Tuesday.
A virtual captive team for a UK FinTech in AI and analytics
Eight continuous years, still running. The client took part in choosing who joined. What formed carries architect-level and technical-lead roles alongside developers and dedicated test engineers, average tenure on the team is four to five years, and some of the engineers who started the account are still on it.
It started small and scaled, which is the arc most centers actually follow.
Read the case study →A dedicated operations team for a global supply-chain technology company
Over four years running with zero attrition among the key team members. At the far end of the work is a Fortune Global 500 logistics operator, which is the scale the output has to hold at.
Read the case study →“We evaluated a number of potential offshore technology providers to work cohesively with our London based team, and decided to partner with AnAr. Initially, we started small and scaled later. The AnAr team aligned themselves to our practices, and technology standards to meet our talent needs and delivery commitments. The offshore team has become an integral part of our overall operations and there has subsequently been a very smooth interaction between my entire team (onsite and offshore).”
Founder and Director, UK Based FinTech Company, AI and AnalyticsA center you own is only worth what is inside it, and what is inside it is people who stayed.
What buyers ask us first
Is this the same as GCC setup in India?
Yes. You will also see it called a captive center, a global capability center, or a build-operate-transfer arrangement. The shape is the same one.
How quickly can engineers be working on our systems?
About four weeks from go-ahead. Engineers who already know the stack, so nobody learns your platform on your budget.
How long does setting up the company take?
About three months from your decision, to a registered company. It does not have to happen first, and it does not have to happen at all. The team can be working for years before you start it, which is what most clients do.
We already have lawyers and accountants. What do you actually add?
Your counsel should do the incorporation, and we work alongside them on the India-side detail rather than in place of them.
The difference is not the paperwork. It is that on the day it clears, you either own an empty company and a deadline, or one with a working team already inside it.
You are not the only ones offering this. What is different?
Build-operate-transfer is a well-established model and there are good providers running it. Two questions separate them, and they are worth asking all of us.
What was the team doing while the center was being set up: working on your systems from the first month, or being assembled near the handover date? And when the company is yours, do those people move into it, or are they re-hired into it, which turns a transfer into a job offer anyone can decline?
Ours are working from month one, on employment terms written from the start to move. Ask the same two of anyone else on your list.
What happens when someone leaves?
We build the team so that overlapping knowledge sits across it rather than in any one person, which is what makes a replacement a delay instead of a setback. Sourcing and paying for that replacement is ours.
Where does our data sit, and who can reach it?
Inside your environment, under your access controls, on your identity provider. The team works in your systems rather than copying anything into ours, and we build to whatever your own obligations require.
If you have a specific standard to meet, send it and we will tell you exactly how we would meet it.
Who employs the team before we own the company, and after?
We do, on our Indian company, until yours exists. Yours does after that, and the people are the same people either side of the date.
How long do we run the center before setting up the company?
As long as you want. Some clients know the date before we start, some take years to decide. You set it.
How big does this need to be to be worth doing?
Smaller than most people assume for the team, and larger for the company. A team is worth having at a handful of engineers.
An Indian subsidiary of your own carries a fixed floor of administration that does not shrink with headcount, so it earns its place once the center is big enough and permanent enough that the floor disappears into the numbers. Tell us the size you are planning and we will tell you which one we would do.
What if we start this and change our minds?
You tell us, and we either fix it or wind it down. There is no version of this where the answer to something that is not working is a longer commitment.
The hard part of owning a company in India isn't the incorporation.
It's that on the day the paperwork clears, you own an empty company and a deadline. Every part of the plan that looked sequential turns out to have been the same three months, and the part you can't compress is the one you started last.
Start the center now and that day arrives with it already running.
Send us the situation, not a requirements document.
You can come to us with:
- A board decision that's already been taken
- A customer contract that requires a local entity
- A headcount plan for India and no view yet on how to hold it
- A plan your counsel has drafted that you'd like read by an operator
- A team you already have elsewhere and a company you want it moved into
- A center you need running now and an ownership decision you'd rather make later
An engineer reads it and writes back within one business day with what we would recommend and why, including when what we would recommend is not owning a company at all. Not a meeting invitation, not a deck, not a sequence.
You will speak with engineering, not sales. The person who answers is the person who would work on it, and they can answer technical questions in the first reply.
Tell us what you're planning
A few details so the right engineer can read it and reply.