Zoho

Why we picked it This is the India proof of the answer's edge: great people in smaller cities are underpriced and overlooked, and hiring them is a real advantage. Zoho built a multi-thousand-person, globally competitive engineering org from Tenkasi and 100+ small-town offices on exactly the thesis Vembu states plainly: 'the talent is already there, we just have to nurture it.' For an Anywhere Founder deciding whether to hire outside Bengaluru or Delhi-NCR, it is the most credible Indian precedent that distributed, small-town teams ship world-class work, with retention and loyalty as a bonus, not a compromise.

Rural Revival: building world-class products from small towns

From Zoho by Sridhar Vembu / Zoho 15 min read

• Talent in smaller Indian cities is not lesser, it is unnurtured and overlooked, which is precisely why it is available to you
• Small remote offices of 20 to 30 people work; you do not need everyone in one metro to build seriously
• Hiring locally where people already live cuts the migration pull and buys you loyalty a metro salary war cannot