First, the conflict of interest: AxureOne is a recruitment agency, and we're in this list. A guide to the top recruitment agencies in India written by one of them deserves some suspicion, so here is how we've handled it. We haven't ranked anyone, including ourselves. Every other agency below is described only with facts it publishes about itself, and we say where each fact comes from. We don't comment on any other firm's fees, success rates or quality, because we can't verify them.
The second thing to say early is that no recruitment agency in India is best for every hire. A firm built to staff 400 warehouse roles across six states works differently from one that finds a CFO in confidence, or one that fills your single senior developer seat. So instead of a top 10 that pretends otherwise, this guide groups well-known agencies by what they're for, then gives you a checklist for choosing between them.
How we compiled this list
We picked firms that are widely known in India and that come up when employers search for recruitment or placement agencies. For each one we used only the firm's own published material: its India website or official India office page, plus TeamLease's investor pages. Figures such as office counts, client numbers and years in India are what each firm says about itself, as published in October 2026; we haven't audited them. Anything we couldn't confirm from a firm's own pages is left out, which is why some entries give a founding year and others don't. Offices and service lines change, so confirm the details with the firm before you sign.
Start with the type of agency, not the name
In India, "recruitment agency", "placement agency" and "job consultancy" are used for the same service. The business model behind each firm is what differs. It decides how you'll pay, who will work on your role and what happens if a hire doesn't work out. Most agencies fall into one of five types:
- Agency type
- Large staffing & workforce firm
- Examples in this guide
- Randstad India, ManpowerGroup India, TeamLease, Quess, Adecco India
- Typical fee model
- Contingency (8–15% of first-year CTC) for permanent hires; a service fee on top of pay for contract staff
- Best for
- Volume, contract and multi-city hiring, with payroll and compliance handled
- Watch out for
- Ask who will actually work your role; get any contract-staffing fee as its own line
- Agency type
- Specialist & professional recruitment
- Examples in this guide
- Michael Page India, JAC Recruitment India
- Typical fee model
- Contingency, typically 8–15% of first-year CTC, higher for senior and management roles
- Best for
- Mid-to-senior professional roles in a defined function or sector
- Watch out for
- Check the consultant covers your function and city, not just the brand
- Agency type
- Executive search
- Examples in this guide
- Egon Zehnder, ABC Consultants
- Typical fee model
- Retained, typically 20–25%+ of first-year compensation, paid in stages
- Best for
- CXO, board and confidential leadership searches
- Watch out for
- Stage payments are due whether or not the search closes; agree milestones first
- Agency type
- Tech, GCC & RPO specialist
- Examples in this guide
- Careernet, plus the tech arms of the large staffing firms
- Typical fee model
- Contingency per hire, or RPO priced per recruiter per month or per hire
- Best for
- Technology hiring at volume and GCC build-outs
- Watch out for
- RPO usually pays off only at volume, often put at 15–20+ hires a year
- Agency type
- Boutique & regional agency
- Examples in this guide
- Smaller independent firms, often focused on one city or sector
- Typical fee model
- Contingency or a flat fee per hire
- Best for
- Single hires or small batches, with one accountable recruiter
- Watch out for
- Smaller bench; check depth in your role and city, and get the guarantee in writing
- Agency type
- AxureOne (boutique)
- Examples in this guide
- Ahmedabad HQ, hiring pan-India
- Typical fee model
- From 6.5% of annual CTC (contingency, junior to senior roles) or from ₹6,499 per hire for bulk
- Best for
- IT, non-IT, contract and leadership hiring, with a 90-day replacement guarantee
- Watch out for
- Early-stage and small; ask how we'd source your role. No published leadership fee
| Agency type | Examples in this guide | Typical fee model | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Large staffing & workforce firm | Randstad India, ManpowerGroup India, TeamLease, Quess, Adecco India | Contingency (8–15% of first-year CTC) for permanent hires; a service fee on top of pay for contract staff | Volume, contract and multi-city hiring, with payroll and compliance handled | Ask who will actually work your role; get any contract-staffing fee as its own line |
| Specialist & professional recruitment | Michael Page India, JAC Recruitment India | Contingency, typically 8–15% of first-year CTC, higher for senior and management roles | Mid-to-senior professional roles in a defined function or sector | Check the consultant covers your function and city, not just the brand |
| Executive search | Egon Zehnder, ABC Consultants | Retained, typically 20–25%+ of first-year compensation, paid in stages | CXO, board and confidential leadership searches | Stage payments are due whether or not the search closes; agree milestones first |
| Tech, GCC & RPO specialist | Careernet, plus the tech arms of the large staffing firms | Contingency per hire, or RPO priced per recruiter per month or per hire | Technology hiring at volume and GCC build-outs | RPO usually pays off only at volume, often put at 15–20+ hires a year |
| Boutique & regional agency | Smaller independent firms, often focused on one city or sector | Contingency or a flat fee per hire | Single hires or small batches, with one accountable recruiter | Smaller bench; check depth in your role and city, and get the guarantee in writing |
| This is us AxureOne (boutique) | Ahmedabad HQ, hiring pan-India | From 6.5% of annual CTC (contingency, junior to senior roles) or from ₹6,499 per hire for bulk | IT, non-IT, contract and leadership hiring, with a 90-day replacement guarantee | Early-stage and small; ask how we'd source your role. No published leadership fee |
Non-AxureOne fee models are industry-reported ranges from our recruitment agency fees guide, not any named firm's quote. Ask each firm for its own terms in writing.
Each fee model is explained in our guide to recruitment agency fees in India. If you're still deciding whether to use an agency at all, in-house vs agency vs RPO compares the costs at different hiring volumes.
Large staffing and workforce firms
These are the biggest names by headcount and footprint. Most run permanent recruitment alongside contract staffing, payroll and outsourcing, which suits hiring many people, in many cities, or on someone else's payroll.
Randstad India
Per its India website, Randstad India is a wholly owned subsidiary of Randstad Holding nv and has been in the Indian market for more than 30 years. It offers temporary and permanent staffing, outsourcing and other workforce services in engineering, finance and accounting, HR, IT, manufacturing and logistics, and sales and marketing. It says it has more than 800 specialist recruiters across 20 office locations, and its registered office is in Chennai.
ManpowerGroup India
ManpowerGroup's India website lists four brands: Manpower, Experis, Talent Solutions and Rotostat, which handles industrial engineering services. Its services include permanent recruitment, RPO, executive search, contract staffing, payroll and outplacement. The corporate office is in Gurgaon and the registered office in New Delhi, with branch offices in cities including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Ahmedabad. The site says Manpower has served the Indian market for more than 25 years.
TeamLease Services
The company-history page on TeamLease's investor site says it started operations in 2002 with four offices, moved its operations to a central head office in Bengaluru in 2005, and listed on the BSE and NSE in 2016. It also says TeamLease co-founded the Indian Staffing Federation in 2011. Its service lines include staffing, tech and specialised staffing (its IT staffing business was merged into TeamLease Digital), apprenticeships and internships, HR and payroll, and regulatory compliance. Its job site, TeamLease.com, describes itself as a platform for skilled labourers and entry-level workers.
Quess Corp
Quess says it was listed in 2016 and describes itself as a workforce solutions company. It says it serves more than 2,300 clients and operates in eight countries. It groups its services into general staffing, IT solutions (formerly Quess IT Staffing), recruitment services (RPO, executive search and permanent recruitment) and a global capability centre (GCC) practice, along with global mobility and gig-worker services. Its corporate address is in Bengaluru.
Adecco India
Adecco's India website lists general staffing, professional staffing, permanent recruitment, an "RPO Lite" service, field sales and marketing outsourcing, payroll outsourcing, and apprenticeship and skilling programmes. It states 12 offices, more than 700 clients and more than 15 lakh placements since 2002. Its corporate office is in Bengaluru.
Specialist and professional recruitment firms
These firms are organised by function or sector, and their consultants focus on particular types of role. Most of their work is mid-to-senior permanent hiring.
Michael Page India
Michael Page's India site lists offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bengaluru. It says the firm covers permanent, temporary, executive search, consulting and advisory, and outsourcing services. Its specialisms range from accounting, finance and banking to engineering, healthcare, HR, technology, legal, marketing, supply chain, property, retail and sales. The Indian entity is Michael Page International Recruitment Pvt Ltd.
JAC Recruitment India
JAC Recruitment India says it was established in 2014 and has offices in Gurgaon (Delhi NCR) and Bengaluru. It is part of the JAC Recruitment group, which is headquartered in Japan and operates in 12 countries. It works with both Indian and multinational companies. It lists particular strengths in manufacturing, chemicals, automotive, electronics, mechanical, trading and consulting firms, and in sourcing multilingual professionals.
Executive search firms
Executive search is a different business. It's usually retained, usually for CXO, board and confidential roles, and priced to match.
Egon Zehnder
Egon Zehnder's India page says it opened its India office in 1995 and that its 60-member team works from New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. Its services in India include CXO search, CEO succession, board consulting, family business advising and leadership development.
ABC Consultants
Per its website, ABC Consultants was founded in Kolkata in 1969 by Dr. Bish Agrawal. It now centres on executive search, talent advisory and board advisory, alongside services such as leadership assessment, organisation design and executive coaching. It says it works across more than 20 industry verticals, from aerospace and defence to private equity.
Tech, GCC and RPO-focused firms
Some firms specialise in building technology teams and global capability centres (GCCs). Much of that work is recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), where the agency runs part of your hiring function for you.
Careernet
Careernet's website says it has operated since 1999. Its campus is in Bengaluru, with offices in Chennai, Coimbatore, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Mumbai, Noida and Pune. Its services include RPO, permanent hiring, professional staffing and leadership hiring, and it works alongside its group brands HirePro, Longhouse and MyCareernet. It also publishes research on GCC talent demand, including a report on semiconductor-design GCCs.
The large staffing firms run dedicated tech arms too. TeamLease handles IT staffing through TeamLease Digital, and Quess through Quess IT Solutions.
Boutique and regional agencies
Beyond the national names are many smaller agencies, often focused on one city, region or kind of role. The bench is smaller; in return, a good one offers closer attention and local knowledge. Quality varies widely, which is what the checklist below is for.
AxureOne (that's us)
We're an early-stage boutique agency headquartered in Ahmedabad. We hire across India for IT and non-IT roles, including permanent, contract and leadership positions. Our fees are published: from 6.5% of annual CTC on contingency, which is our standard for junior to senior roles, or from ₹6,499 per hire for bulk requirements. Nothing is added on top. Every hire carries a 90-day replacement guarantee: if the person resigns or doesn't join within 90 days, we find a replacement at no extra cost. We haven't published a separate fee for CXO search, so ask us about the mandate.
We're not the biggest agency in this list and we won't pretend to be. If you need 300 contract staff across a dozen states next month, a large staffing firm is built for that. We're a better fit if you want one accountable recruiter on a hard-to-fill IT role or a leadership search, or on hiring in Ahmedabad, GIFT City, Vadodara, Surat or Rajkot.
Is there a real "top 10 recruitment agencies in India"?
Not one you can check. You can measure an agency's size: headcount, offices and, for listed firms, revenue. But no independent, public ranking measures how well agencies place people, which is what you actually care about. That's why the lists disagree, and why "top" in a search result usually means big or well marketed. A more useful "top" is narrower: the best agency for this role, at this seniority, in this city, at a fee you've seen in writing.
How to choose a recruitment agency in India
Once you know which type you need, shortlist two or three firms and check each one against the same list:
How to choose a recruitment agency in India
0 of 8 checkedThen ask one question that covers most of the list: "If I add up every fee I'll pay you for this hire, what's the total, and what do I get back if it doesn't work out?" An agency that can answer clearly in a minute will probably be easier to work with than one that answers with a list of conditions.
Fake placement agencies charge candidates. Real ones don't.
A legitimate recruitment agency is paid by the company that's hiring. Several well-known firms say so on their own websites. Randstad India states it does not charge candidates any fee at any stage of its recruitment process, TeamLease says it does not take money for job placements, and Careernet says it does not charge job seekers a placement fee. AxureOne doesn't charge candidates anything either. If an "agency" asks a job seeker for a registration, training, verification or placement fee, treat it as a red flag. Our fake job offer checklist explains how to spot one. Employers should watch for this too: a recruiter who takes money from candidates for your role is doing it in your company's name.
If you're hiring now and want to see a boutique agency's terms in writing, tell us about the role. We'll give you the fee and the guarantee in the first conversation.