Country guide · India
Moving to India: cost of living, salaries, taxes, visas
World's largest tech-services market; Bangalore + Hyderabad anchor the talent pool; very low cost-of-living for English-speaking professionals.
India's tech sector is the world's largest by headcount — Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, NCR (Delhi/Gurgaon/Noida) and Chennai concentrate the bulk of the international-facing engineering, product and services talent. English is the working language across professional environments.
For inbound relocators, the cost-of-living arbitrage is one of the largest globally — a Western salary stretches dramatically in India. The trade-offs are air quality (Delhi especially), bureaucratic friction for non-Indian nationals (visa categories are narrow), and infrastructure variability outside top-tier neighborhoods.
Data signals
What the numbers say about India
The take-home math
Take-home pay in India is shaped by a roughly 25% effective payroll deduction (income tax + social security), with VAT at 18%.
The main hub
Its primary hub, Bangalore, carries a cost index of 13 (New York = 100).
Cost spread within the country
Across the 3 India cities we track, the cost index spans 12 (Delhi) to 20 (Mumbai).
Economy
Inflation and jobs in India
Consumer prices rose 2.4% in 2025, averaging 5.2% a year across 2020–2025 — a mean pulled up by the 6.7% of 2022, so the 2025 rate is the better guide to today.
A missing year in a series means the source reported no observation, not zero. From the World Bank (World Development Indicators, updated 2026-07-13).
Income per capita
Average income in India
India's income per capita is about $11,000 (GNI, PPP-adjusted US$), per the World Bank (2024). No comparable national wage survey is published for India, so this is an income proxy rather than an average-salary figure. Source: World Bank.
This is a country-wide figure. For what you actually need to earn in a specific city, see the salary-by-lifestyle breakdown on each city's cost-of-living page.
At a glance
India relocation profile
Vs the catalog average
Is Bangalore cheap or expensive, relatively?
Bangalore's cost and rent index against the mean across every city Mundevo covers.
Index base: New York = 100. Catalog average is the unweighted mean across all cities Mundevo tracks, recomputed on every build.
Tax and visa landscape
Headline tax model + entry-point visa overview for relocators.
- Effective income tax: 13.0%
- Social security (employee): 12.0%
- Total payroll deduction: 25.0%
- VAT: 18.0%
- Currency: INR
Effective rates assume a single salaried filer at country median wage. Special regimes (e.g. expat-favoring schemes) are not applied here — see the visa guide for those.
Visa categories, residency routes, and tax-regime context for relocators are detailed in the dedicated visa guide.
India visa guide →Salary bands at Bangalore — by role
Illustrative gross-salary bands for 6 senior IC roles in Bangalore. Derived from NYC anchor × India pay-tier multiplier. Cross-check Levels.fyi, Glassdoor before negotiating.
| Role | P25 | P50 | P75 | NYC anchor (P50) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software engineer | ₹6,981,960 | ₹8,667,261 | ₹11,074,833 | $180,000 |
| Product manager | ₹7,222,717 | ₹9,389,532 | ₹12,519,376 | $195,000 |
| UX / product designer | ₹4,766,993 | ₹6,283,764 | ₹8,450,579 | $145,000 |
| Marketing manager | ₹4,116,949 | ₹5,633,719 | ₹7,583,853 | $130,000 |
| Data scientist | ₹6,500,445 | ₹8,426,503 | ₹11,074,833 | $175,000 |
| Finance analyst | ₹5,296,659 | ₹7,463,474 | ₹10,593,318 | $155,000 |
Top relocation corridors
Closest peers by cost-of-living index — the moves most commonly considered alongside India.