A German industrial-automation company is opening an engineering centre in Pune. The plan calls for 60 engineers within nine months, a site leader, an HR manager and 25 contract technicians for a test lab. Within a fortnight the India programme lead has four proposals: a staffing company offering the technicians on its own payroll for a mark-up, an RPO provider asking for a twelve-month programme to deliver the engineers, a search firm wanting a retainer for the site leader, and a consultancy offering to design the salary structure.
The proposals use different fee bases and guarantees, and nobody has yet asked whether the staffing company holds a contractor licence under the new Labour Codes, how 90-day notice periods will affect start dates, or who is responsible for candidate data under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act.
India has one of the world’s most layered recruitment markets, from listed staffing groups with large contract workforces to boardroom search firms. This guide explains how that market works after the Labour Codes, profiles 15 firms in three groups, and ends with the question set to answer before you engage one. It is part of the Recruitment Agencies & HR Consultancies series in our Finding the Right Person hub; for job boards, campuses and notice periods, read the India hiring playbook.
- Contingency fees are commonly quoted from about 8.33% of annual CTC (one month’s pay) for junior roles to 20% or more for senior hires; replacement guarantees of 60–90 days are standard.
- Contract staffing falls under the Labour Codes in force since 21 November 2025; contractors with 50 or more contract workers need a licence.
- There is no national licence for local placement consultancies yet: a central bill was released in draft in 2025 and Maharashtra has passed its own law.
- Notice periods of 60–90 days and offer drop-outs make the joining date, not the offer, the right trigger for fees and guarantees.
How the recruitment and HR-services market works in India
Agencies, which Indians usually call placement consultancies, fill a much larger share of professional roles than in most Western markets. Hiring managers expect shortlists from consultants, and multinationals building global capability centres (GCCs) often run several suppliers in parallel. Direct sourcing on Naukri and LinkedIn, referrals and campus hiring remain the backbone for volume, but our channel decision matrix will usually point a scarce or senior role towards a firm.
The market has four layers. Staffing groups, several listed on Indian exchanges, employ flexi staff on their own payroll and charge a mark-up or service fee. RPO providers run part or all of a client’s hiring for a programme fee. Independent consultancies, from two-person desks to national firms, work mostly on contingency, and retained search firms handle CXO and board roles. HR consultancies sit alongside, benchmarking pay and running assessment.
Contingency fees are commonly quoted at about 8.33% of annual CTC for junior and volume roles, 12–15% for mid-level hires and 20% or more for senior roles. Retained search is billed in stages. Replacement guarantees of 60 to 90 days are standard. Notice periods are long, typically 30 to 90 days and often 90 in technology, so candidates can collect counter-offers while serving notice. Ask agencies to keep a back-up candidate warm and tie both the fee and the guarantee to the joining date. Figures are indicative at the time of writing (November 2026).
Labour Codes, contract labour and the new placement-agency rules
The four Labour Codes came into force on 21 November 2025, replacing 29 central laws. For staffing, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code matters most. Explainers on the code describe a contract-labour chapter that applies where 50 or more contract workers are engaged, a single licence for contractors operating in several states valid for five years, a prohibition on contract labour in an establishment’s core activities (with exceptions), and a duty on the principal employer to pay unpaid wages and recover them from the contractor. Ask any staffing firm for its licence and for monthly proof of provident fund and ESI payments, because those obligations reach you if the contractor fails.
The codes also changed how offers are built. Fixed-term employees get statutory benefits on a par with permanent staff, including pro-rata gratuity, and the uniform definition of wages adds back allowances above 50% of total pay when contributions are calculated. A staffing firm or consultancy quoting on a CTC built under the old rules may be quoting the wrong number.
Placement consultancies themselves are lightly regulated for now. In August 2025 the central government released a draft Private Placement Agency (Regulation) Bill that would require registration valid for five years, with penalties up to short prison terms; at the time of writing it was still a draft. Maharashtra passed its own Private Placement Agencies (Regulation) Bill in 2025, requiring registration, published service charges and placement reporting. Recruiting Indians for jobs abroad is a separate regime: recruiting agents must be registered under the Emigration Act 1983 through the eMigrate system. Every consultancy also processes candidate data under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, so your contract should define its role as your processor. Budget for GST, currently 18% on most recruitment and staffing services.
Recruitment, staffing and placement firms
The first group covers staffing at scale; the second covers RPO and professional recruitment. Card text reflects what each firm says it does on its own website. Listings are editorial and independent; no firm paid to be included, and inclusion is not a recommendation. Check licences, terms and references directly with each firm.
Staffing and volume specialists
Lists staffing solutions, tech and specialised staffing, apprenticeships and internships, HR and payroll services and a regulatory-compliance SaaS platform. Also runs a jobs portal for frontline hiring and TeamLease Digital for tech staffing.
Lists general staffing, IT solutions (contract and permanent tech talent, managed services), recruitment services and RPO including executive search, global capability centre set-up, global mobility and gig workforce through Taskmo.
Covers permanent recruitment (executive search, selection, RPO), staffing (value, IT and EPC staffing; NATS and NAPS apprenticeships), HR advisory, payroll and compliance outsourcing, and background verification.
RPO and professional recruitment
Offers enterprise and project recruitment process outsourcing, executive search (talent mapping and leadership hiring) and talent-acquisition consulting, including employer branding and DEI. EMA Partners India describes Taggd as its enterprise RPO business.
Lists RPO, permanent hiring, professional staffing, leadership hiring, career transitions and technology-enabled hiring, and says it runs more than a million candidate assessments a year.
Lists temporary and permanent recruitment, professional talent solutions (finance, healthcare, HR, sales, legal, ITES/GCC), executive search, payroll, hire-to-retire services and workforce advisory.
Recruits on permanent, temporary and contract terms and offers interim executives. Specialisms include technology, banking and financial services, finance and accounting, healthcare and life sciences, and HR.
Executive search firms in India
Retained search in India concentrates in Mumbai, Delhi NCR and Bengaluru. Indian firms compete strongly with international brands, particularly for promoter-led and family-owned companies where trust and discretion count for more than global reach.
Dates its history to 1969 and offers executive search, talent advisory (leadership assessment, reference checks, organisation design, coaching) and board advisory, in sectors such as healthcare, financial services, real estate, auto and pharma.
Runs retained executive search and leadership advisory for board, C-suite and senior roles, professional search via James Douglas India, enterprise RPO via Taggd and board services via EMA STAIR. Part of EMA Partners International; listed on the NSE in January 2025.
Its India practice offers leadership hiring, board advisory, succession planning and leadership consulting, including for global capability centres and shared-services organisations.
The Mumbai team, working with the New Delhi office, offers executive search, board effectiveness, and leadership assessment and development.
HR consultancies and HR advisory firms
For pay surveys, job architecture, assessment and HR transformation, the global consultancies have large Indian practices. Use them before you open roles, so agencies quote against defensible salary bands. If you have no Indian entity yet, compare an employer of record with the options in our guide to hiring where you have no entity.
Lists compensation and benefits data, rewards strategy, executive pay, job architecture, talent assessment, benefits consulting and HR transformation. Its site notes that Mercer is becoming Marsh.
Lists Human Capital as one of two main capability areas, covering talent and rewards, health and benefits, human capital analytics, pensions and retirement, and workplace wellbeing.
Lists total rewards, compensation strategy and design, work transformation, health and benefits, employee wellbeing and global benefits management.
Lists HR strategy and technology (SuccessFactors, Workday, Oracle, ServiceNow), Human Capital as a Service for ongoing HR operations, and organisation and work transformation.
The 15 firms side by side
Shortlist by the type of hire, not by brand. Domains are plain text; confirm contact details on each firm’s own site.
Briefing and contracting an Indian agency without surprises
Start with a scorecard and a pay band built on the new wage definition, then give every firm the same pack: role outcomes, location and hybrid days, the fixed-pay range and variable component, notice-period tolerance and whether you will buy out notice. Our pay-band question set helps you agree the numbers internally first. Then settle these terms:
- Fee base: fixed annual CTC or total CTC including variable pay and joining bonus.
- Trigger and guarantee: invoice on joining, with a 60–90-day replacement window from that date.
- Exclusivity: a short exclusive period (two to three weeks) for hard roles often produces better work than an open race between ten agencies.
- Staffing compliance: contractor licence, PF and ESI challans, wage-code payslips and an indemnity.
- Data: DPDP processor terms, candidate consent records and a deletion schedule.
For RPO, agree service levels on time to shortlist, offer-to-joining ratio and hiring-manager satisfaction, plus an exit plan for candidate data and employer-brand assets. For a wider view of terms, see recruitment agency fees and contracts by country, our flagship guide to HR consulting and recruitment firms worldwide, and the recruitment agencies and executive search category of the Kurums Solutions Directory.
Before you engage a recruitment or HR firm in India
These complement our 50 questions to answer before you open a job posting. Building a regional team? Compare our guides to HR firms in Singapore and in the Philippines.
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