Your engineer is moving back to India
They gave notice for personal reasons, not because they wanted to leave your team. Without an Indian entity it looks like the employment has to end. It does not.
Why good people go home
It is rarely about the job. Four reasons account for most of these conversations, and none of them is a signal that the person has disengaged.
Family
Ageing parents, a partner's career, a child who should grow up near grandparents. This is the most common reason and the least negotiable one.
Visa and residence
A Blue Card tied to a role, a spouse who cannot work, a naturalisation timeline that no longer adds up. The paperwork decides, and the person does not get a vote.
What the money buys
A senior salary goes considerably further in Bangalore than in Munich or Frankfurt. Property, schooling and care are the calculations behind it.
It was always the plan
Plenty of people come to Germany for a defined stretch — a degree, a few years of European experience — and always intended to go back with it.
Three options
Four, if you count building your own Indian subsidiary — which is a real answer at scale and an expensive one for a single person.
Let them go
The default, because it needs no decision. You lose the domain knowledge, the codebase context and the relationships, and you replace a senior person in a market where that takes months.
What it costs you
A vacancy, a search, and six months of ramp-up on knowledge that already existed in your team.
Keep them as a freelancer
The tempting shortcut: same person, an invoice instead of a payslip. It is legitimate where the person is genuinely independent — several clients, own equipment, own working method. It is not, where they sit in your standup, take direction from your lead and work only for you.
What it costs you
A false self-employment argument in Germany, plus questions about permanent establishment and third-country data access that surface at the worst moment — an audit, a diligence, a data incident.
Employ them through us
Their German employment ends and our Bangalore partner employs them in India from the following day. Same person, same team, same work. You get one monthly invoice and no Indian entity of your own.
What it costs you
Our service fee from €399 per person per month, plus their Indian salary and the statutory employer contributions, billed at cost.
How the handover runs
Start when they tell you, not when they leave. Notice periods, not our setup, are what makes this take time.
Tell us as early as you can
The moment the move is real. We need the role, the location in India and the intended start — everything else can follow.
We agree the Indian package
We tell you what comparable roles in Bangalore pay so you can set the salary knowingly. You decide the number; we cost out the statutory contributions on top of it.
The German employment ends
Handled by you and your own advisers — this is the part we do not touch. Have your payroll and legal people confirm the end date before we set the Indian start date against it.
Indian employment starts the next day
Contract under Indian law, EPF, ESI, professional tax and TDS registered, and a workstation set up in our Bangalore office if they want one.
Nothing changes in your team
Same person, same access, same tickets. You receive one monthly invoice in EUR, USD or AED, and India stays our administrative problem rather than yours.
What stays the same
- The person, and everything they know about your systems.
- Their place in your team — standups, reviews, on-call rotation, tooling.
- Working hours that overlap: India runs three and a half to four and a half hours ahead of Germany, so most of your day is shared.
- The data protection setup, once the transfer basis is documented for India.
- Your operational control of what they work on and when.
What genuinely changes
- The legal employer, the contract and the currency of the payslip.
- The statutory framework: Indian notice periods, contributions and public holidays.
- Their German social security and tax position ends with the German employment — their own advisers should walk them through what that means.
- Your cost base, which is the reason most companies look at this in the first place.
- The invoice: one line item from Dubai instead of a payroll entry.
Are you the one moving?
This page is written for the employer. The other side of the same conversation — what a move home means for your career and how to keep working with DACH teams — is over here.
For professionals returning to IndiaWhat companies ask
Can they simply keep the German contract and work from India?
It is the first idea everyone has and the one to check hardest. Someone living and working permanently in India on a German employment contract raises employer registration, income tax and permanent establishment questions in India, and the answer depends on facts about your company rather than about ours. Have your tax adviser look at it before you agree to it as a favour.
How far ahead should we start this?
As soon as the move is decided. The Indian side takes days rather than weeks once we have the details, but the German notice period usually does not, and there is no reason to compress the handover into the last fortnight. Two to three months is comfortable; two weeks is doable and unpleasant.
Do we have to cut their salary?
That is your decision, not ours. Cost of living and market rates in Bangalore differ substantially from Munich or Zurich, and we will tell you what comparable roles there actually pay so you can decide with a number in front of you rather than a guess. Plenty of companies pay above the local market to keep someone they value.
What about access to our systems and customer data?
It continues, and it needs the transfer to India documented properly rather than assumed. That is a piece of paperwork, not an obstacle — the same one that applies to any Indian processor. Our guide sets out what the transfer basis looks like and what your data protection officer will want to see.
What if they want to come back to Germany in a few years?
Then we move them the other way. Relocation to DACH is a separate service, and having employed them in India in the meantime makes the case simpler rather than harder — the employment history is continuous and documented.
Can we do the same for a contractor rather than an employee?
Yes, and it is often the better outcome for both sides. A long-running Indian freelancer who works like a member of your team is the textbook false self-employment exposure; employing them properly through us removes the argument instead of managing it.
Do not lose them over a missing entity
Tell us the role, the timing and where in India they are moving. We will tell you what the handover looks like and what it costs — before you have to answer them.