The Question HR Should Ask First
Most India work-visa content answers "how does the employee apply?" The prior question — can we, as a company, sponsor at all, and is this role defensible? — decides the outcome long before the candidate fills in a form.
Applications are assessed on two files, effectively: the individual's, and yours. The individual's is usually the easier of the two.
Requirement 1: A Registered Indian Entity
A foreign company with no Indian entity cannot sponsor an Employment Visa directly. The sponsoring employer must be a legally registered entity in India, and that entity's documentation forms part of the application: incorporation records, registration details, and the letters it issues in its own name.
This is the hard gate. If you don't have an Indian entity, sponsorship isn't a paperwork problem to solve — it's a structural one, with its own set of options covered in hiring foreign nationals without an Indian entity.
If you're still deciding what entity to establish, the structures (subsidiary, liaison, branch, project office) and their trade-offs are in our foreign companies operating in India guide.
Requirement 2: A Role That Justifies a Foreign Hire
The framework rests on a premise you must be able to evidence: this role requires skills not readily available in the Indian labour market. Missions expect an explicit justification — commonly including an undertaking from the employer addressing why the position isn't being filled locally.
What makes a justification hold up:
- Specificity. "Senior engineer" justifies nothing. The particular system, product line, regulatory regime, or proprietary process the person brings does.
- Seniority or scarcity that's visible on paper — the candidate's record should demonstrate the thing you're claiming is scarce.
- Consistency between the job description, the contract, the salary, and the visa category. Three documents describing three slightly different jobs is a query waiting to happen.
Be realistic about the framework's shape: it is built for specialists, managers and transferees, not for roles a domestic hire fills equally well.
Requirement 3: The Salary Threshold — Currently in Transition
The Employment Visa carries a minimum remuneration floor: a gross salary above ₹16.25 lakh a year, the figure in MHA's guidelines and on India's missions' Employment Visa pages.
Two things matter operationally:
- It is a floor on the whole package. Allowances and perquisites such as rent-free accommodation count where they are included for income tax and quantified in the contract. A contract of under a year is assessed pro rata, and a package structured to clear the line by a few thousand rupees invites a query.
- It's assessed on the total package, not base salary — documented allowances and perquisites count, provided the contract supports them.
Reduced thresholds apply to some categories (notably faculty at central higher-educational institutions), with narrow exemptions for roles such as ethnic cooks, language teachers and certain translators. Full detail in our salary requirements guide.
Requirement 4: The Right Category
Since the June 2026 restructure there are three explicit lanes — E-1 (direct employment), E-2 (intra-company transfer), E-3 (NGO and religious workers). Filing a transfer as general employment, or vice versa, is now a visible error rather than a nuance the process absorbs. See the E-1/E-2/E-3 breakdown.
Where Employer-Side Applications Actually Fail
In roughly the order we see them:
| Weakness | Why it bites |
|---|---|
| Generic role justification | Reads as "we preferred this person," not "we need this skill" |
| Package structured to just clear the floor | Leaves no margin if the mission applies the higher figure or discounts an allowance |
| Documents that don't agree | Job title, contract, and application describing different roles |
| Entity paperwork gaps | Registration details that don't match, or an entity too new to evidence operations |
| Wrong category filed | Especially transfers filed as direct employment |
| Treating the visa as the end | FRRO registration within 14 days is the employer's problem too |
A Practical Readiness Test
Before making an offer, your HR or mobility lead should be able to answer, in writing:
- Which registered Indian entity is sponsoring, and are its documents current?
- What specifically does this person bring that we cannot hire locally — in one paragraph a stranger would find persuasive?
- What is the gross package, and does it clear ₹16.25 lakh with every allowance quantified in the contract?
- Which category — E-1, E-2 or E-3?
- Who owns FRRO registration inside 14 days of arrival, and the extension calendar after that?
If any answer is "we'll work it out later," that's the gap to close before the candidate resigns from their current job.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a foreign company sponsor an India Employment Visa without an Indian entity?
No — the sponsoring employer must be a registered Indian entity. Without one, sponsorship isn't available directly, and you're choosing between establishing an entity, an employer-of-record arrangement, or a different engagement model.
What salary do we need to offer?
A gross salary above ₹16.25 lakh a year, assessed on the whole package including quantified allowances and perquisites. Reduced rates apply to some faculty and to PIOs and family members of Indian citizens, and a few roles are exempt — our salary threshold guide lists them.
Do we have to prove no Indian could do the job?
You need a credible justification that the role requires skills not readily available locally, commonly supported by an employer undertaking. It is not a formal labour-market test of the kind some countries run, but a generic justification is a common cause of queries.
How long does employer sponsorship take?
It varies by mission, category and how clean the file is. The controllable variable is your documentation — applications with consistent, specific paperwork move materially faster than ones that generate queries.
What are our obligations after the visa is granted?
They begin, not end, at arrival: FRRO registration within 14 days for qualifying stays, reporting status changes, tracking expiry, and reporting departure. Our employer responsibilities guide sets out the full calendar.
Disclaimer
India Visa Experts is an independent private consulting firm, not affiliated with the Government of India or the MHA. Sponsorship requirements, salary thresholds and category rules are set by the authorities, vary by mission and case, and are currently changing — verify the position applying to your case at the time of filing. Verified against available official and professional sources in August 2026. General guidance, not legal advice.