Which India City Should You Hire In?
Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi NCR, scored against each other on the things that actually differ — bench depth for your function, fully loaded cost, attrition, office cost and client-facing suitability. Tell us what you're hiring and what you're optimising for, and the ranking follows your weighting rather than ours.
Ranked, not listed
Six cities scored 0–100 for your function, with what drove each result
Your priority wins
Name one and it takes 70% of the weight — the ranking moves, and that movement is the output
Cost per hire, loaded
Salary, statutory load and EOR fee, plus what attrition costs you each year
What won't decide it
Time zone and professional tax are the same or trivial everywhere. We say so.
What Are You Hiring?
Six answers. The last one is the one that moves the ranking most.
The team
Function and seniority set the salary base; headcount and work model change how much the city choice matters at all.
What are you optimising for?
Pick up to two. One takes 70% of the weight, two take 40% each — so a stated priority actually wins rather than nudging. Pick none and you get a neutral weighting.
Exhibit 1
City fit, ranked
Exhibit 2
Cost against bench depth
The same six cities on both scales. Read them together: a city high on the second chart and low on the first is the one doing two jobs at once.
Fully loaded cost per hire
Bench depth for this function, out of 100
Exhibit 3
Fully loaded cost per hire
Exhibit 4
Attrition and replacement drag
Exhibit 5
What actually changes by state
EPF, ESI, gratuity and TDS are central — identical in all six cities. Only the rows above vary, and professional tax is capped at ₹2,500 a year by Article 276 of the Constitution, so it is a rounding error on a hire rather than a reason to pick a city. The HRA column is the one row that moves real money for the employee: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai are classified metros, so 50% of basic is exempt against 40% everywhere else — but only for employees on the old tax regime, since the new regime drops HRA relief entirely. Statutory minimum wages also differ sharply, and Delhi sets India's highest at roughly ₹18,500 a month unskilled and ₹22,400 skilled, against about ₹9,000 in Karnataka and ₹10,000 in Maharashtra — which binds on entry-level support and operations roles, not on the salaries modelled above. Registration validity is state-administered and published sources disagree, so confirm on the state labour portal.
Exhibit 6
What this tool won't pretend
What this is built on
- Rent. Knight Frank India Q1 2026 city averages, Grade-A office, INR per sq ft per month.
- Attrition. Positioned inside the 15–22% Tier-1 tech band and cross-checked to Aon (India 17.1% in 2025, ~13.6% projected for 2026; IT 13–15%; GCC 12.6%), Mercer GCC tenure (Chennai 3.8 years against Bengaluru 2.9) and published city bands.
- Salary index. City index against Bengaluru = 1.00, reconciled across published 2026 city benchmarks and GCC salary indices. Sources genuinely disagree — one puts Hyderabad level with Bengaluru, another 15–25% below — so midpoints are used and the disagreement is disclosed rather than hidden.
- Statutory load. Taken at 15% of gross. This is NOT comparable to published “20–35% above CTC” figures, which use CTC as the base and usually already embed employer PF and gratuity. On a strict statutory reading with the ₹15,000 PF ceiling applied, the load on a well-paid engineer is nearer 5–10%; 15% leaves headroom for insurance and the employer NPS most global employers actually add.
- HRA. Income Tax Act metro classification — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai are metros at 50% of basic, elsewhere 40%. Old regime only; the new regime drops HRA relief entirely.
- Professional tax. Capped at ₹2,500 a year by Article 276 of the Constitution. Registration validity is state-administered and published sources disagree, so confirm on the state labour portal.
- EOR fee. Wisemonk EOR from $99 per employee per month, flat. The published band is $99–$399.
- Currency. INR figures convert at ₹96 to the dollar, spot July 2026.
This is a planning aid, not a quote. Salary figures are market estimates reconciled across sources that disagree with each other; treat the gaps between cities as directionally right and the absolute numbers as a starting range. Attrition and rent are city averages, not your outcome. Confirm state registrations on the relevant labour portal before you commit to a location.
Get the shortlist pressure-tested
Twenty minutes with someone who has hired into all six of these cities. We will tell you where the salary estimates are softest and where a two-city split beats picking one.
