EOR vs Subsidiary: Which Gets You Operational Faster in India?
An Employer of Record can have your first India hire operational within 1 to 2 weeks, versus 6 to 10 weeks for full entity incorporation and payroll setup.
Using an Employer of Record means partnering with an existing India-registered entity that legally employs staff on your behalf, letting you hire in India without incorporating your own entity first. Since the EOR's infrastructure, entity, payroll registrations, statutory compliance, already exists, a new hire can typically be operational within 1 to 2 weeks of signing the EOR agreement and finalizing the offer.
A full subsidiary incorporation, by contrast, realistically takes 6 to 10 weeks to reach the point of being able to legally employ someone with compliant payroll, once incorporation, PAN/TAN, bank account, and payroll registrations are all sequenced.
The tradeoff isn't purely speed, an EOR is the faster path to a first hire or a small pilot team, but a subsidiary is the structure that supports scaling, direct IP ownership, and long-term operational control. Many foreign companies use EOR deliberately as a bridge, hiring the first 1 to 5 people via EOR while incorporation proceeds in parallel, then transitioning to the subsidiary once it's ready.