away Pods · Nano GCC
Build your India
operating team.
Without building the infrastructure around it.
away.center helps global companies hire, house, operate and scale India-based teams through sourcing and vetting, away.center workspaces, WorkOS, SOPs, reporting and delivery oversight. Start with one role. Grow into an India operating cell.
02 - The four models
Start with one role.
Build an operating system
around it.
The same team can be bought four different ways. What changes between them is not headcount - it's how much of the work away.center is contractually responsible for. Pick a model to see where the line sits.
One person, hired for a defined role and placed inside away.center's workspace, WorkOS and reporting layer. Sell this when you already know the role you need.
away.center is responsible for
- Role design support and the role card
- Sourcing, screening and assessment
- away.center workspace and device setup
- WorkOS, attendance and task visibility
- Weekly reporting cadence
- Replacement support and manager oversight
- HR and admin coordination
You are responsible for
- Business and functional strategy
- Priorities and approvals
- Tool access, brand and product context
- Final business outcomes
Pricing: custom, based on role, experience, city, workspace needs and level of management.
Configure a roleInstead of hiring around a job title, you move a recurring workstream to away.center. We can own defined outputs where inputs are known, SOPs exist and QA is possible.
away.center is responsible for
- Defined workflow outputs
- SOP creation and task templates
- AI-assisted execution and QA
- Delivery rhythm and SLA
- Weekly reporting
- Continuous workflow improvement
You are responsible for
- Strategic direction and approvals
- Access and context
- Business decisions
- Accepting or rejecting recommendations
Pricing: scope-based monthly retainer, set by volume, complexity and SLA.
Scope a workflowTwo to four people combining several roles and workflows under one delivery system. Away takes on the coordination between them, not the commercial outcome of your function.
away.center is responsible for
- Everything in Managed Role, for each person
- Coordination across roles and workstreams
- A named delivery lead
- SOP library and WorkOS dashboard
- Weekly reporting, monthly review
- Replacement bench
You are responsible for
- Strategy and commercial targets
- Prioritisation across the pod
- Approvals and escalations on your side
- Scope changes agreed in writing
Pricing: custom, based on team architecture and how much delivery responsibility sits with away.center.
Design a podA 5–15+ person India operating cell for a company that wants an India presence without spending months building the entity, office, HR and management stack first. away.center helps architect it and operates it with you.
Away is responsible for
- India team architecture and role mix
- Hiring across the cell
- Workspace and city deployment
- Management layer and delivery governance
- WorkOS, SOP library, reporting
- Expansion planning and replacement bench
You are responsible for
- The mandate for the India cell
- Strategy, roadmap and commercial outcomes
- An executive sponsor on your side
- Employment structure decisions, with your advisers
Pricing: custom, based on team size, role mix, city and operating requirements.
Start a Nano GCC diagnostic03 - Pod templates
Pods are not
a creative-team thing.
These are starting structures, not packaged promises. Each one is a shape we can build and operate — the responsibilities stay defined by the model you choose above.
Revenue Pod
Build a revenue execution team around the pipeline work you already know you need.
Typical roles
Workflows this pod can own
04 - The operating layer
Recruiting is
about a fifth
of the problem.
Finding the person is the part everyone sells. The reason India hires quietly fail is everything that comes after: no desk, no system, no visibility, no one holding quality, no plan when somebody leaves. away.center runs that layer.
05 - The workspace
Nobody does
their best work
on a bed.
This is the part of the model that's hardest to copy and easiest to underrate. Your team works from an away centre - a designed room with other people in it, meeting infrastructure, and a door between work and home. It's infrastructure, not a perk.





Somewhere to actually go
A commute that ends at a desk changes how a working day is structured. Deep work has a room; home stays home.
People on the floor
Your operator sits among other people doing serious work. Isolation is the most common reason a remote India hire quietly disengages.
Rooms when it matters
Meeting and conference rooms with proper AV for your calls, reviews and onboarding sessions — booked, not improvised.
A reason to stay
away centers run events, wellness sessions and a café. A workplace people like being in is a retention mechanism, not decoration.
away centers operate in Bangalore, Vizag and Kolkata. away Pods currently deploys from Bangalore; Kolkata and Vizag follow as workflows mature.
06 - WorkOS
You don't lose
visibility just because
your team is elsewhere.
Every role, workflow, operator and task lives in one place, with evidence attached and a weekly report that shows movement instead of hours. Here's the shape of it.
Illustrative interface concept showing the structure of the WorkOS modules. Not a screenshot of a live product, and field values shown are examples.
07 - How this compares
Five ways to get
the work done.
Each column is a legitimate choice - they optimise for different things. This is where away Pods sits relative to them, on the dimensions founders actually raise on a first call.
| Dimension | Hiring locally | Freelancers | Offshore agency | Remote hire, self-managed | away Pods |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to launch | Longest - search, notice periods | Fastest | Fast | Slow - you run the search | Weeks, once the role is defined |
| Recruitment burden on you | High | Low, but repeated every project | Low | Highest | away.center runs it end to end |
| Where they work | Your office | Wherever | Vendor floor | Home, usually | An away center |
| Continuity of context | Strong | Weak - resets each engagement | Medium - staff rotates | Strong, until they leave | Held in SOPs and WorkOS |
| Operating visibility | You see it directly | Invoices and deliverables | Vendor reporting | Whatever you build | Task board, evidence, weekly report |
| Replacement support | You start again | You start again | Vendor swaps staff | You start again | Defined process, backup bench |
| Management overhead | Yours | Yours, fragmented | Low, but distant | Yours, across time zones | Shared - you choose how much |
| Cultural integration | Native | Minimal | Limited | Depends entirely on you | Your tools, your rituals, our floor |
| Scaling path | Linear and slow | Fragmented | Rigid packages | Repeat the whole effort | Role → workflow → pod → Nano GCC |
| Cost predictability | High but heavy | Variable | Medium | Medium | One monthly figure, agreed upfront |
Characterisations of the alternative models are generalisations offered for orientation, not measured benchmarks. Your experience of any of these will vary by market, role and vendor.
08 - How launching works
Seven steps,
then it runs.
No client goes live without a role card, a WorkOS setup and a reporting cadence. That's the whole discipline - most of what goes wrong with distributed teams is a step that got skipped here.
01
Diagnose
What's actually breaking, who does it today, how often it repeats.
02
Architect
Role or workflow cards: responsibilities, KPIs, reporting, working model.
03
Hire
Sourcing, assessments, your shortlist and a backup candidate.
04
Set up
Workspace, device, tool access, WorkOS and the SOP folder.
05
Onboard
A structured 10-day sprint, from kickoff to a go-live review.
06
Operate
Daily updates, weekly report, monthly performance and scope review.
07
Scale
Role becomes workflow, workflow becomes pod, pod becomes a cell.

09 - Build your Pod
What would your
India team actually
look like?
What are you trying to build?
Pick one to start. You can add roles from any function in the next steps - this just sets the sensible defaults.
What kind of support do you need?
This maps to one of the four models. The difference is how much of the work away.center is contractually responsible for.
Choose your roles
Add and remove people. The pod assembles as you go.
Not sure yet? Leave it empty — we'll suggest a starting structure on the next screen.
Your pod, so far
Add a role and your pod starts to take shape.
How should it run?
Only what actually changes the recommendation. Everything here is optional except the two we need to reply to you.
Your suggested away.center setup
Directional, not a commercial proposal. We'll pressure-test it with you on a diagnostic call before anything is quoted.
Revenue Support Pod
3 people · Bangalore
away.center operating layer
What happens next
- A 30-minute diagnostic - we pressure-test the role, workflow or team shape against what's actually breaking.
- A written architecture: role cards, responsibilities, KPIs, reporting cadence and the working model.
- A proposal with scope, pricing, replacement policy and a clear split of what away.center owns and what you own.
- Sourcing and vetting begins once you're happy with the architecture.
Your selections carry into the form - you won't be asked twice.
10 - Pricing & economics
One monthly figure.
Agreed before
anyone starts.
Pricing depends on the role, the city, the experience level, the workspace and how much of the management sits with us. We quote it in the proposal, in full, once - after we understand what you actually need.
- Based on role, experience, city
- Workspace and device included
- WorkOS, visibility, weekly reporting
- Replacement support
- Priced on volume, complexity, SLA
- SOPs, QA and delivery lead oversight
- Defined outputs, not hours
- Based on team architecture
- And how much delivery responsibility we hold
- Delivery lead, SOP library, monthly review
- Based on team size and role mix
- City and operating requirements
- Governance and expansion planning
Model it with your own numbers
Compare against what
this costs you today.
We're not going to invent a salary benchmark for your market. Put in what a fully-loaded hire actually costs you locally, and the monthly figure you'd be comfortable with in India - the tool just does the arithmetic.
Difference you would be modelling
—
Lines the a.centerway model absorbs
- Recruiter fees and search time
- Office lease and desk cost
- Device procurement and setup
- HR and admin coordination
- Onboarding and SOP build
- Reporting and task tooling
- Day-to-day management time
- Re-hiring when someone leaves
Both figures above are yours, not ours. Away publishes no salary benchmarks and makes no savings claim on this page. Nothing here is a quote, an estimate of your actual cost, or a commitment. Your real away.center price is set in a proposal after a diagnostic.
11 - Nano GCC
Your first India office
doesn't have to start
as an office project.
A Nano GCC is a small India operating cell - usually starting at three people and growing to five, ten, fifteen. The same intent as a global capability centre, without the entity, the lease, the HR build and the eighteen-month runway before anyone does useful work.
It isn't a separate product. It's where the ladder ends up when a company keeps adding roles and workflows and eventually wants them to behave like one team.

12 - Who this is for
Built for companies
that want leverage,
not headcount.
The common thread isn't industry - it's a team that has more work than it has people, and no appetite for building Indian hiring, HR and management infrastructure to solve it.
01
Funded startups
Extending runway without slowing execution, or adding capacity a local market won't supply fast enough.
02
SaaS companies
Support, CRM operations, onboarding and revenue operations that need to run every day, not in bursts.
03
Founder-led businesses
A founder's office that gives back the hours currently spent on follow-ups, research and coordination.
04
Global agencies
Delivery capacity that scales with the client roster instead of with the local hiring market.
05
E-commerce brands
Catalogue, listings, order operations, customer support and marketplace work that repeats weekly.
06
Creator-led businesses
Content operations, repurposing and publishing rhythm behind a person who cannot also be the studio.
07
Consultants scaling delivery
Research, analysis and production capacity behind engagements, without partner-level hires.
08
AI-native companies
The human layer around automations - building them, maintaining them and reviewing their output.
09
First India hire
Companies hiring their first person in India who would rather not learn Indian employment infrastructure first.
10
Preparing an India presence
Teams who know a GCC is coming and want a working cell before committing to entity and lease.





13 - Positioning
What away Pods
is not.
- Outsourcing
- A staffing agency
- A freelancer marketplace
- A BPO
- An EOR or payroll platform
- Just coworking
- Cheap labour by the hour
away Pods is a managed India operating layer.
Some clients use us to hire and run one dedicated role. Some move a recurring workflow across. Some build a full Nano GCC. Across every model, away.center provides the hiring layer, the workspace, WorkOS, SOPs, reporting and the delivery visibility that make India-based work actually function.
- We sell operating capacity, not hours or headcount.
- We take responsibility for hiring quality, workspace, visibility, delivery process and replacement.
- We take responsibility for workflow outputs where the workflow is defined, repeatable and measurable.
- We don't promise revenue, growth, meetings or profitability because we placed a person against a job title.
On employment and compliance: awa.centery is not automatically your employer of record, payroll provider or legal employer, and does not provide legal, tax, immigration or compliance advice. Employment, payroll and compliance infrastructure is arranged directly by you or coordinated through appropriate platforms and partners - including Deel, Rippling, Remote or your own India entity - and the specific structure is set out in your agreement.
We're early. Here's what
we can actually show you.
There are no customer logos on this page and no case studies yet, because away Pods is new and we're not going to invent them. What we can do is let you inspect the thing itself before you commit to anything.
Come and see the floor
Work from away.center Koramangala for a day before you decide anything. It's the same room your team would sit in, on an ordinary working Tuesday.
Read the artefacts
Ask for a real role card, a workflow card and a sample weekly report. Judge the operating standard on the documents rather than on the pitch.
Meet who would run it
Talk to the delivery lead who would hold your pod - not a salesperson who introduces you to the delivery team afterwards.
14 - Questions
The things
founders actually
ask us.
Something not covered? Put it in the form below and we'll answer it directly rather than sending a brochure.
A Pod is India-based operating capacity that away.center builds and runs for you. It can be one person, one recurring workflow, a small team of two to four, or a full India operating cell. What makes it a Pod rather than a hire is the layer around it: sourcing and vetting, an away.center workspace, WorkOS for tasks and visibility, SOPs, weekly reporting, delivery oversight and replacement support.
Yes, and most clients do. That's a Managed Role - one dedicated person, inside the operating system. You can add roles or convert repeating work into a Managed Workflow later, without restarting the relationship.
A Managed Role is one person. away.center owns hiring, workspace, WorkOS, visibility, reporting and replacement; you own the functional direction and the business outcome.
A Managed Pod is two to four people working as one unit, with a named delivery lead. away.center additionally owns the coordination between the roles and the delivery quality of the agreed scope. It's a bigger commitment on our side, so we're deliberate about when we sell one.
It's work bought as an output rather than as a person. CRM hygiene, outbound account research, founder follow-ups, content repurposing, support triage, AI SEO and visibility monitoring, weekly reporting. We'll only sell one where inputs are known, an SOP can be written, QA is possible and the output is measurable - because that's where we can genuinely take responsibility for the result.
A small India operating cell - typically starting at three people and scaling to five, ten or fifteen. It's the same intent as a global capability centre, at a size that makes sense for a company that isn't a multinational. away.center helps architect the team, hires it, houses it, runs the operating layer and plans the expansion, according to the model in your contract.
You choose. Some clients manage directly and use away.center purely for the infrastructure. Some want away.center's delivery lead running the day-to-day while they set direction and review output. On pods and Nano GCCs there's always an away.center delivery lead involved, because coordination is part of what you're buying. We agree the split in writing before anyone starts.
Yes. Your team works in your tools, on your rituals - WorkOS sits alongside them for role definition, task evidence, SOPs and reporting, rather than replacing your stack. Tool access, approvals and any security requirements are set up during onboarding.
India Standard Time is UTC+5:30, which gives natural overlap with Europe, the UK, the Middle East, Singapore and Australia, and a workable morning overlap with the US East Coast. We agree the required overlap window as part of the role card - shifted hours are possible where the role justifies it and the person has agreed to them.
From an away centre. away.cenetr operates spaces in Bangalore, Vizag and Kolkata; Away Pods currently deploys from Bangalore, with Kolkata and Vizag following as workflows mature. Working from an actual designed workspace rather than a bedroom is a deliberate part of the model, not an add-on.
There's a defined replacement process, and we keep a backup candidate identified on roles wherever we can. Our internal target is a replacement shortlist within seven working days and a completed transition within fifteen, with knowledge handed over and a transition report. The specific replacement terms that apply to you are set out in your agreement.
Role intake, then a job description, sourced and scored candidates, a written communication check, a role-specific assessment, human screening and interviews - then your shortlist and final selection. We score for communication, role skill, reliability, judgement, learning speed, comfort with AI tools, ownership and coachability. You make the final call on every hire.
It depends on the structure you choose, and it's written into your agreement. away is not automatically your employer of record or legal employer. Some clients employ or contract people directly through a platform such as Deel, Rippling or Remote, with away.center providing the hiring, workspace, WorkOS and delivery layer above it. Others take a fully managed arrangement with away.center. We'll walk you through the options; decisions about employment structure should be taken with your own advisers.
Employment, payroll and compliance infrastructure is either arranged by you directly or coordinated through appropriate platforms and partners, depending on the model in your contract. away.center does not provide legal, tax, immigration or compliance advice, and does not hold itself out as a payroll provider or compliance adviser. Where away.center coordinates administration, the scope of that coordination is defined in the agreement.
Yes - we're designed to sit above them rather than compete with them. The platform handles employment infrastructure, payroll and records. away.center handles role design, sourcing, workspace, WorkOS, SOPs, reporting, delivery support and replacement. If you already have one of these, keep it.
Yes - frontend, backend, full-stack, QA and infrastructure support are all roles we can architect and hire for. Engineering is typically bought as Managed Roles or a Managed Pod, because you own the technical direction and the product outcome. We won't sell engineering as a Managed Workflow unless there's a genuinely repeatable, SOP-backed workstream underneath it.
Yes, and support is one of the better candidates for a Managed Workflow - ticket triage, first response, knowledge-base upkeep, escalation handling and support reporting are repeatable and measurable once the rules are clear. It can start as one Managed Role and convert as the SOPs settle.
Yes. AI automation associates, workflow automation engineers, n8n / Make / Zapier specialists and AI QA operators are all roles we hire for. Typical work is SOP mapping, building and maintaining automations, prompt library setup, tool integration and reviewing AI output - the human layer that keeps automations working after they're built.
That's the intended path. Start with a role, watch what repeats, convert the repeating parts into workflows, group them into a pod, and grow the pod into a Nano GCC. Because the role cards, SOPs and reporting exist from day one, each step adds to what's already there rather than starting again.
The diagnostic and architecture usually take days rather than weeks. Hiring time depends entirely on the role- a well-defined execution role moves considerably faster than a senior specialist. We'll give you a realistic timeline for your specific role upfront rather than a headline number, and onboarding runs as a structured 10-day sprint once someone is selected.
You own approved deliverables, per the terms of your agreement. away.center retains its own pre-existing templates, SOPs, tools, systems and WorkOS intellectual property. IP, confidentiality and data-access terms are set out in the master services agreement and statement of work.
For individual roles, pricing is based on the role, city, experience level, workspace and device needs, and how much management sits with away.center. For workflows, pods and Nano GCCs, pricing is based on scope, complexity, volume, SLA and delivery responsibility. It's quoted as one monthly figure in a written proposal, with a setup fee and first month upfront. We don't publish rate cards because the honest answer depends on the role.
Yes - that's the whole point of the Managed Workflow level. But we'll only take output responsibility where the workflow is genuinely definable: known inputs, a written SOP, a QA checklist, a measurable output and an agreed SLA. If the work is still ambiguous, we'll tell you it should start as a Managed Role and convert once the pattern is visible.
Yes. Device and work setup is coordinated as part of onboarding, specified against what the role actually needs - a designer and a support associate don't need the same machine. Device arrangements are confirmed in the proposal.
Yes, and we'd encourage it if you're anywhere near one. away centres run day passes and hourly options, so you or a colleague can see the floor your team would be working on before committing to anything.
15 - Start here
What would your
India team look like?
Tell us what's breaking. We'll come back with a role, workflow or team architecture - and an honest answer about whether away.center is the right way to solve it.









