By market
HR software for India
Capstan is an all-in-one HR platform for Indian teams: one HRIS that holds every employee and contractor, with the complete core and all fourteen modules on every plan, free for your first twenty people, and billed monthly in rupees with no annual contract.
Every figure sits on the pricing page and nowhere else, because pricing is adjusted to your country and belongs in one place.
What do Indian teams get with Capstan?
An Indian team gets the whole platform, not a stripped starter tier. Capstan is an HRMS and HRIS for India in one product: a single system of record for people, documents and process, with the full feature set on every plan including the free one.
- The complete core HRIS: one directory holding every employee and contractor across entities, effective-dated records, documents, self-service and reporting.
- All fourteen modules, from onboarding and leave to attendance, workflows and alumni access, with nothing sold module by module and nothing held back for a paid plan.
- Leave policies and public-holiday calendars per location, which matters in India because both the establishment law and the holiday list differ by state.
- Two-tap attendance and a clean payable-days count, the input your payroll partner needs when someone joins or leaves mid-month.
It is free for teams of up to twenty active people, with no time limit, which is why it suits Indian startups making their first hires. The full breakdown of the platform is on the product page, and how it lines up against the tools you are probably weighing is on the comparison pages.
How is Capstan billed in India?
An Indian workspace is billed in Indian rupees, because the currency you are billed in follows your billing country. Billing is monthly, in arrears, per active seat above your first twenty, with no annual contract, no prepaid term and no lock-in.
- The first twenty active people are free on every plan, and the count is of people active at once, so someone serving out notice does not use up a place.
- A paid plan differs from the free one in exactly one way, the twenty-active-employee cap it lifts. It changes nothing about the software and unlocks no module.
- You can downgrade or leave at any time, and dropping back to Free keeps all fourteen modules intact.
The per-seat rupee figure, the free-plan cap and the billing shape are all public on the pricing page, and only there.
Does Capstan run Indian payroll?
No. Capstan does not run, calculate or file Indian payroll, and it holds no PF, ESI, TDS, professional-tax or gratuity rate, slab or formula anywhere. It works in partner-integration mode: it compiles the inputs it already holds and hands them to whoever does compute.
- It gathers attendance, approved leave, overtime, compensation changes and expenses into a documented export for your payroll partner or chartered accountant.
- It files their computed payslips and results back onto each person, so the record stays complete without Capstan touching the arithmetic.
- If you want one vendor to both compute and file your Indian payroll, that is a different product, and it is honest to know that now rather than three months in.
The statutory shape behind all of this, and where each piece sits in gross to net, is mapped in the guide to hiring employees in India.
Can Capstan invoice contractors in India?
Capstan's India country pack adds GST-aware contractor invoicing and withholding fields, so a contractor invoice can carry the GST lines an Indian invoice needs. The rates seeded in that pack are indicative and are pending a compliance review before live use.
- Treat the output as a working draft to check with your adviser, not certified, live India tax compliance. Capstan does not claim to be a tax filer.
- The contractor relationship is a genuinely different one from employment, not a cheaper version of it, and where the line sits is a decision to make deliberately.
- The registers, documents and history sit in the same record as your employees, so a contractor is not a second spreadsheet.
Which India-specific tools are built in?
Four free calculators handle the arithmetic Indian hiring keeps demanding, each running entirely in your browser with nothing sent anywhere and no personal data asked for.
- CTC breakdown calculator
Splits a cost-to-company figure into components and a rough in-hand, so an offer can be explained rather than argued about.
- Gratuity calculator
Estimates the gratuity lump sum that accrues over qualifying service, with every rate a field you fill.
- HRA exemption calculator
Works out the house-rent-allowance exemption from the rent, salary and city inputs you name.
- Payable days calculator
Counts payable days for a mid-month joiner, leaver or unpaid stretch, the number payroll actually runs on.
Where does your data live?
Your data lives in the EU, not in India. Capstan runs from a single self-contained region, with data resident in Frankfurt and compute in Amsterdam, under GDPR-grade protection.
- An Indian workspace is served from that one EU deployment. There is no separate India region, no India-local residency and no DPDP localization.
- A buyer who must keep employee data physically inside India should know that plainly before choosing Capstan, because we will not imply otherwise.
- The trade is deliberate: one region, one security posture, GDPR-grade handling for every market Capstan serves rather than a weaker copy per country.
Start free for up to twenty people, then pay monthly in rupees for the seats you use.