Compare the three-year cost of hiring engineers at home with building a team in India: your own GCC, an employer of record, or a vendor. Every assumption is visible and editable.
These are the exact assumptions the calculator uses. Salaries are annual base pay in USD for mid-market Bengaluru hiring. Change any of them under "Advanced".
| Assumption | Value |
|---|---|
| India salaries (junior / mid / senior) | $15K / $28K / $45K |
| Home mid-level salary | US $150K, UK $95K, Germany $90K, Denmark $100K, Australia $100K |
| Home seniority scaling (junior / mid / senior) | 0.65 / 1.0 / 1.4 of mid-level |
| Home all-in cost on top of salary | +30% (payroll tax, benefits, equipment, recruiting) |
| India statutory and benefits | +20% of salary |
| Workspace, equipment and tools in India | $3,500 per engineer per year |
| Travel and coordination with your home team | $3,000 per engineer per year (all India models) |
| Attrition and replacement allowance (GCC, EOR) | $2,000 per engineer per year |
| Productivity gap (extra India headcount for the same output) | +10% in the base case |
| Model | How it is costed |
|---|---|
| Your own GCC (subsidiary) | One-time setup of $120K + $9K per engineer, then run cost plus 12% for leadership and admin |
| Employer of record | No setup. Run cost plus a $200 per person per month fee (published prices start at $99). You manage the team |
| Vendor / outsourcing | No setup. Run cost plus a 35% vendor margin, with attrition handled by the vendor |
About the saving figure. Real savings vary a lot by team, role and structure, so the headline is an average of three cases. Pessimistic: India salaries 25% higher, 25% more headcount for the same output, and travel and coordination cost 50% higher. Base: the table above. Optimistic: India salaries 10% lower and no productivity gap. The table and chart show the base case.
The model is deliberately simple. It will not tell you which structure is right for your company, because that depends on control, IP, hiring speed and how long you plan to stay. It will show you roughly how the money behaves, and how quickly a GCC pays back against a vendor or against hiring at home.
A GCC is a company-owned engineering or operations centre in India, usually run as a subsidiary. You hire, manage and own the team directly, instead of renting capacity from a vendor.
Against hiring at home, a GCC pays back within a few years at almost any size. Against a vendor, the payback gets faster as the team grows, and the calculator shows the figure for your headcount. Against an employer of record, a GCC rarely wins on cost, so the real reasons to build one are control, IP ownership, retention and permanence.
A GCC is your own legal entity. An offshore development center is usually capacity a vendor runs for you. An employer of record hires on your behalf under its entity while you direct the work, which avoids setup but gives you less structural control.
Innometrique is an AI engineering firm in Bengaluru. Our founder has run an 80-person engineering centre in India for a European company since 2023, which is why we built this. See the founder's track record for the detail, and what is and is not Innometrique's own work.
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