Field Notes · 7 min read
Your first five hires in Bengaluru matter more than the model
Companies spend weeks comparing Employer of Record providers and incorporation timelines. That work matters. It is also not what usually decides whether a small India team works. The first five people do.
They become the standard everyone after them is measured against. They are the reason a strong candidate accepts or walks away. If two of them leave in year one, you are not refining a centre — you are restarting it with a weaker reputation in a market that talks.
Hire for the team you will have in eighteen months
The common mistake is to fill today’s ticket backlog with whoever is available cheapest. That produces a group that can close Jira tickets and cannot own a service, coach juniors or talk to your product leads without a translator in the middle.
Write down the shape you want at fifteen people: which functions, which seniority mix, who talks to Europe or the US without waiting for permission. Then hire the first five as if they are the nucleus of that shape, not a temporary patch. A strong senior engineer plus a solid mid-level hire in the same domain beats five disconnected generalists every time.
Pay the founding hires properly
Bengaluru’s market for good people is not the India of ten years ago. Staff and principal engineers know what global companies pay. If your “cost saving” plan depends on underpaying the people who will define the team, you will hire people who could not get a better offer — and they will leave when they can.
Use live salary bands for the role and level, not a spreadsheet from a peer’s 2022 offsite. Offer at the solid middle-to-upper band for the founding roles. You can be more disciplined later, once the centre has a reputation candidates recognise.
Give them work that matters
Nothing kills an India team faster than being handed only the tickets nobody at headquarters wants. People notice. Candidates notice when they ask what the team owns. Customers notice when quality is uneven.
Give the first pod a real service, module or support window they own end to end, with a named counterpart on your side who has time for them. Overlap hours, written handovers and clear decision rights matter more than another all-hands slide about “one team.”
Interview like you mean it
Do not outsource the bar. Your engineers should sit on the panels for technical roles. Use the same scorecard you would use at home, adapted for the stack you actually run. Screen for communication in the overlap window you designed, not for accent theatre.
Background checks, IP assignment and confidentiality terms belong in the offer process from day one — especially under an EOR, where the employment contract must assign IP to your company, not only to the provider.
Plan retention before the first resignation
Probation reviews, a training plan for the first ninety days, and a manager who does one-to-ones are not HR decoration. They are how you keep the people you fought to hire. In a five-person team, one departure is a twenty percent cut in capacity and a story that spreads.
A short checklist before you open the first req
- Which three roles absolutely must be strong, and which two can be mid-level?
- Who on your side owns the relationship for the first six months?
- What does this team own that you would be proud to describe to a candidate?
- Are salary bands current for Bengaluru this quarter?
- Are exit and IP terms clear in the EOR or employment contracts?
Get those answers right and the legal model becomes a supporting decision. Get them wrong and no amount of structuring will save the centre.
Working through your first India hiring plan? We can mark up roles, bands and a realistic timeline in a short call. Get in touch.