Build-Operate-Transfer offshore pod for a European product company

Context

The client is a European product company that had decided India would be a long-term part of their engineering footprint. The intent was a wholly-owned Indian subsidiary — not a vendor relationship — but the runway to get there directly was eighteen months of entity work, payroll setup, compliance learning, hiring channels and office space before a single line of code shipped.

Challenge

Neither of the two off-the-shelf models fit:

• Pure staff augmentation would have kept them dependent on a vendor indefinitely, with no transfer path.
• Project outsourcing would have ceded engineering direction in a way they did not want.

They wanted to own engineering decisions from day one and own the entity at month eighteen.

Approach

We structured the engagement as Build-Operate-Transfer:

• Build — we hired and onboarded engineers under our Indian entity, providing seats, equipment, and an established work environment.
• Operate — we ran payroll, compliance, HR and facilities. The client owned roadmap, engineering culture and code review from week one.
• Transfer — a structured handover plan was agreed at engagement start, with milestones at six, twelve and eighteen months and a defined trigger for entity transfer once headcount and processes were stable.

Every operational decision was documented as it was made, so nothing relied on tacit knowledge that could not be transferred.

Outcome

The pod was operational in week four. The client's engineering leadership has been running the team since day one without taking on entity overhead.

The transfer is planned for the third quarter of 2026, by which point the pod will move under the client's own subsidiary with continuity of staff, equipment and processes intact.