UK Companies in India: Business Opportunities and Market Entry Guide (2026)

India has quietly become one of the most important growth markets for British business, and 2026 is the year the relationship steps up a gear.

There are now 794 UK companies in India, up from 667 a year earlier, and together they turn over around ₹5,693 billion and employ more than 552,000 people, according to the Britain Meets India 2025 report from Grant Thornton Bharat and the CII.

The bigger story sits just ahead of them. On 15 July 2026 the India-UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement comes into force, rewriting the tariff and mobility rules that have shaped this corridor for decades.

If you run a UK business and India has been on the “maybe later” list, later has arrived.

This guide covers who is already there, what the trade deal changes, which sectors are open, and the practical routes to set up, including how to hire a team in India without first building a company. For the wider playbook, our guide to doing business in India sits alongside this one.

The State of UK Companies in India in 2026

British firms are not new arrivals. The UK is the sixth-largest foreign investor in India over the past two decades, and UK-based companies in India span finance, energy, engineering, consumer goods, software and pharmaceuticals.

What has changed is the pace. The count of UK firms in India rose from 635 in 2023 to 667 in 2024 and 794 in 2025, a 19% jump in a single year.

Two states dominate. Maharashtra hosts about 38% of UK companies and Delhi NCR a further 29%, so two-thirds of the footprint sits in just two clusters, with Karnataka and Tamil Nadu rising fast for technology and manufacturing.

The largest British company in India by revenue is Vedanta, the natural-resources group, which alone employs more than 97,000 people. Other heavyweights include Hindustan Unilever, Ashok Leyland, United Spirits, Shell India, JCB India and the Barclays Global Service Centre.

Roughly 58% of UK firms in India are classified as MSMEs, which tells you something useful: this is not a club only for FTSE 100 giants. Mid-sized British companies are setting up too, often starting with a small team before scaling. If you want the corridor in context, compare it with the French companies in India and Swedish companies in India guides, which track the same trend from other European markets.

The money is moving in the same direction. UK investment in India rose to £19.1 billion in 2024, up about 10% on the year before, and India is now the UK’s 11th-largest trading partner, accounting for 2.5% of total UK trade. Put plainly, more British firms are arriving, with bigger cheques, and they are spreading beyond the two traditional clusters into Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and a growing list of tier-two cities where costs and attrition are lower.

What the India-UK trade deal (CETA) changes for UK firms

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, commonly abbreviated as CETA, is the most consequential development for this corridor in a generation. Negotiations concluded on 6 May 2025; the deal was signed in London on 24 July 2025 by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, and it enters into force on 15 July 2026. It runs to 30 chapters covering goods, services, digital trade, financial services, professional mobility and government procurement.

For UK companies, the headline numbers are large. India is reducing duties on 89.5% of its tariff lines, covering 91% of UK exports, while the UK is removing tariffs on nearly all Indian goods. Some of the cuts are dramatic on day one. 

Scotch whisky and gin tariffs into India fall from 150% to 75% immediately, then taper to 40% over ten years. Tariffs on UK cars drop from over 110% to 10% within quotas.

On the services side, the deal eases entry for contractual service suppliers, intra-corporate transferees and independent professionals, and a separate Double Contribution Convention removes double social-security payments for posted staff.

Bilateral trade stood at roughly USD 56 billion when the deal was signed, and both governments have set a Roadmap 2030 goal to double it.

The practical takeaway for a UK firm is that the cost of trading and the friction of moving people both fall sharply from mid-2026. Pricing, supply-chain and hiring decisions that were marginal under the old tariffs may now make clear commercial sense.

Services matter as much as goods here, and that is the part many UK firms overlook. CETA opens around 137 services sub-sectors, including IT and IT-enabled services, financial and legal services, professional consulting, architecture and engineering.

For a UK software, finance or consulting business, that means cleaner market access and clearer rules for selling into India and for moving specialists between the two countries.

The mobility provisions ease entry for business visitors and intra-corporate transferees, so rotating a project lead from London to Bengaluru is less of an administrative headache than before. None of this removes the need to hire locally, but it lowers the cost of doing both.

Why UK Firms Are Choosing India Now?

Beyond the trade deal, four structural forces make India hard to ignore.

• • Market size and a rising middle class. India is the world’s fastest-growing large economy and is forecast to become the third-largest by around 2028. Its middle class is projected to reach roughly 60 million people by 2030 and head toward a quarter of a billion by 2050.
  • A vast, English-speaking talent pool. India produces more STEM graduates than any other country, has around 3.3 million software engineers, and more than 135 million English speakers. For UK firms that is a deep, communicable workforce in the same working language.
  • Cost efficiency without a quality trade-off. Running a technology team in India typically costs up to 50% less than the UK equivalent, while output quality holds up. That gap is why so many UK firms build capability in India rather than simply outsourcing to it.
  • A gateway to Asia and friendlier reforms. GST, the simplified zero-rated GST treatment for EOR services, “Make in India” and steady infrastructure spend have cut red tape, and India’s location opens the door to wider Asian markets.

UK Software and Technology Companies in India

If there is one place UK software companies in India concentrate, it is the Global Capability Centre. A GCC is a company-owned office that runs engineering, product, data, AI and shared services for the parent.

India hosts more than 130 UK GCCs employing over 200,000 professionals, which makes British firms the second-largest GCC community in the country after the United States, according to the Zinnov UK GCC report.

The Britain Meets India data counts over 90 UK-headquartered firms running GCCs that together employ more than 100,000 people.

Named examples make the trend concrete. Arm, the Cambridge chip-design firm, runs major engineering teams in Bengaluru. Sage, the UK accounting-software group, has expanded its India delivery footprint across Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru.

Industrial-software and engineering names such as AVEVA, Rolls-Royce, BT and Vodafone all operate technology or capability centres in India. The work is no longer back-office support. These centres increasingly own end-to-end product roadmaps and lead enterprise AI programmes.

Most of this activity clusters in a handful of cities. Bengaluru, the “Silicon Valley of India”, hosts the deepest software and R&D ecosystem, with Hyderabad the fastest-growing hub and Pune, Chennai and Delhi NCR close behind.

If you are weighing a captive centre against a lighter-touch start, our guides to GCC hubs in India and GCC versus EOR walk through the trade-offs, and the GCC setup guide covers the build steps.

The reason this model keeps spreading is simple economics paired with depth of talent. Bengaluru alone hosts more than 880 GCC units, and GCC roles typically pay a 12% to 20% premium over traditional IT-services jobs, which helps British firms attract senior engineers without UK-level salaries.

For a UK software company in India, the choice is rarely whether to be there, it is how to start. A wholly-owned centre gives full control but takes months to stand up. Hiring a first pod of engineers through an Employer of Record lets you prove the location in weeks, then convert to a captive GCC once the team and the business case are settled.

UK Brands in India: Consumer Success Stories

British consumer brands have a long head start in India, helped by shared language, familiar tastes, and a fast-growing class of buyers who actively seek premium imports. Several UK brands in India are now household names. Diageo, through United Spirits, leads the premium-spirits market and keeps acquiring local craft labels.

Unilever’s Indian arm, Hindustan Unilever, is one of the country’s largest FMCG companies. Marks & Spencer operates a large store network through a joint venture with Reliance, and Tesco runs both a retail joint venture and one of its largest global technology centres in Bengaluru.

The momentum is still building. Reliance Brands has brought the UK food chain Pret A Manger to Indian cities, and a fresh wave of British lifestyle, fashion and food labels is lining up entries through franchise and joint-venture routes.

For UK brands, the pattern is consistent: pair with a strong local partner, localize the proposition, and use India’s metros as the proving ground before a national rollout. The same logic that lets a Britain company in India test a product line applies to testing a team, which is where flexible hiring comes in.

High Opportunity Sectors for UK Investors

Opportunity is broad, but five sectors stand out for UK firms in 2026.

Technology, AI and digital

India’s digital economy is its fastest-growing segment, and the country now holds the largest AI-ready workforce in the world. UK software firms, fintechs and data businesses find both a market and a base for building here, which is why GCCs keep multiplying.

Renewable energy and clean tech

India is among the global leaders in installed solar capacity and is pushing hard on wind, green hydrogen and grid storage. UK engineering and clean-energy companies have a clear opening in solar, wind, and the technologies that support them, a theme the CETA explicitly encourages.

Healthcare and pharmaceuticals

India supplies a large share of the world’s generic medicines and its healthcare market keeps expanding. UK firms in pharmaceuticals, medical technology and health management can plug into that demand. Our medtigo case study shows how a healthcare business scaled an India team using the PEO model.

Education and skilling

With a median age around 29, India needs high-quality education and vocational training at scale. UK universities, edtech firms and training providers are well placed to help build the workforce that the next decade of growth depends on.

Financial and professional services

Banking, insurance, legal and consulting all feature heavily in the UK footprint, and CETA widens market access in exactly these areas. Barclays, HSBC and a long list of advisory firms already run substantial India operations.

How UK Companies Can Enter the Indian Market

There are three main routes into India, and the right one depends on scale, control, and how fast you want to move.

1. 1. Wholly-owned subsidiary. Maximum control and the natural choice for a long-term, large-scale presence. It also carries the most setup cost, time and compliance. See our guide to setting up an Indian subsidiary.
   2. Joint venture or partnership. Pairs your brand with local market knowledge and distribution, the route many UK consumer brands have taken. Governance and partner selection are the make-or-break factors.
   3. Employer of Record (EOR): The fastest, lowest-risk way to hire and run a team in India without forming an entity. Ideal for testing the market, hiring a few key people, or starting before you commit to a subsidiary.

Whichever route you choose, five things separate a smooth launch from a stalled one.

1. 4. Pick the entry model that fits your stage, not the one that looks most impressive on paper.
   5. Learn the local rules early: Labor law, IP protection and tax, including GST and transfer pricing, all behave differently in India.
   6. Build local relationships: An on-the-ground partner or advisor shortens timelines and lowers risk far more than remote management ever will.
   7. Recruit for retention: Indian professionals increasingly weigh work-life balance and employer brand, so credentials like “Great Place to Work” help you reach top talent.
   8. Pilot before you scale: Start regionally in Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad or Mumbai, prove the model, then expand. You can read the full business expansion in India playbook for the details.

How an Employer of Record Simplifies India Entry

An Employer of Record is the route most UK firms underestimate. An EOR such as Remunance becomes the legal employer of your India team on paper, while your people report to you and do your work. It removes the need to register a company before you can hire.

In practice, the EOR handles the parts of India entry that slow companies down:

• • Compliant hiring, onboarding and payroll in Indian rupees, run to local statutory standards.
  • Employee benefits, tax filing and full statutory compliance, kept current as rules change.
  • Permanent-establishment risk management, so a sales or engineering team does not accidentally create a taxable entity.
  • A fast, low-risk path to test the market, usually onboarding your first hire within weeks. Compare providers in our roundup of the best EOR services in India.

If you want to model the cost before talking to anyone, the EOR cost calculator for India provides a quick estimate that covers payroll, benefits, taxes, and support. When you are ready, our team can map your sector, weigh the risks, and draft a roadmap.

Conclusion

UK companies in India already number 794 and climbing; the trade deal that takes effect in July 2026 cuts the cost of being there, and the talent and market are both deep and growing.

The firms that move early, with the right entry model, will compound the advantage. If hiring a team is your first step, Remunance can stand up a compliant India team for you without an entity. 

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