Bengaluru, Karnataka
HRMS software in Bengaluru
Kuzhu is HR and payroll software for Bengaluru companies: IT services and product teams at Electronic City, Whitefield and the Outer Ring Road, startups in Koramangala and HSR Layout, biotech and life-sciences firms at Electronic City and Bommasandra, and garment and engineering units at Peenya. Hybrid attendance, appraisal cycles and payroll with PF, ESI and TDS run on one employee record, with Karnataka’s flat professional tax above its threshold and the once-a-year labour welfare fund applied automatically.
₹200
the most professional tax a month in Karnataka
2–4 weeks
typical implementation, over video
₹0 for life
up to 15 employees on the Basic plan
Today
What month end looks like in Bengaluru
Ten tools before the first HR hire
A startup at fifty people is running attendance in Slack, leave in a sheet, payroll with a CA, offers in Docs and documents in Drive; the first HR hire spends the first quarter finding out who is on the roll and what they were promised.
Hybrid rules, ORR traffic, three time zones
Engineers at Bellandur come in two days a week and log in from home the rest, support teams follow US hours, and the sales team is on the road; one policy cannot judge all three, so in practice nobody judges any of them.
Peenya runs on shifts and piece counts
Garment and engineering units at Peenya and Bommanahalli pay tailors by the piece and operators by the shift, keep overtime inside a buyer’s code of conduct, and rebuild the wage register from slips before every social audit.
With Kuzhu
How the modules answer it
Every module reads the same employee record, so nothing below is an integration; it is one system seen from four sides.
One record from offer to exit
Recruitment, onboarding, documents, laptops, attendance, leave, appraisals and payroll all read one employee record, so a startup replaces the sheet-and-Slack stack with something the first HR hire can audit on day one.
Employees & Org Structure module
Hybrid, shift and field rules per person
Office, hybrid and remote policies assigned per employee or team, US-hours shifts for support, GPS-tagged mobile punch for sales, and biometric devices at the Peenya gate, all judged individually and shown together on one muster.
Attendance module
Karnataka payroll, including the annual LWF
Professional tax at Karnataka’s single slab above its threshold, the labour welfare fund deducted once a year in December, PF with the EPS split, ESI within ₹21,000, TDS with declarations and both regimes, computed in every monthly run.
Payroll module
Appraisal cycles that actually close
Goals with weights, self and manager reviews, calibration across teams and increment recommendations flowing into salary revision and letters, with every cycle kept on the record for the next promotion conversation instead of memory.
Performance Management moduleCompliance in Karnataka
What is different about payroll in Karnataka
PF, ESI and TDS are the same everywhere in India. These are the parts that follow the state, configured per branch so a company with people in two states runs both correctly.
Professional tax
Karnataka levies professional tax at a single monthly amount on salaries above an exemption threshold, deducted by the employer under a registration certificate and deposited monthly; the company also holds an enrolment certificate for itself. Figures are in the table on this page.
Labour welfare fund
Karnataka’s labour welfare fund contribution is annual: ₹20 from the employee and ₹40 from the employer, deducted in December and paid to the Karnataka Labour Welfare Board by 15 January; it covers employees of factories and establishments under the Act.
Shops & Establishments
Offices, IT companies and startups register under the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961 through the labour department’s e-Karmika portal within thirty days of starting; the certificate is renewed periodically, and units at Peenya using power with ten or more workers fall under the Factories Act.
Holidays
The Karnataka government list, with Kannada Rajyotsava on 1 November, is the default calendar; teams that follow a client’s US or UK calendar set their own list per branch or team and take the state days as compensatory offs where policy allows.
Professional tax in Karnataka
Deducted from salary every month by slab.
| Gross salary | Professional tax |
|---|---|
| Up to ₹25,000 a month | Nil |
| Above ₹25,000 a month | ₹200 |
Asked first
Questions Bengaluru companies ask on the first call
What is the professional tax rule in Karnataka?
Karnataka levies a single monthly professional tax amount on salaries above a threshold, with nothing below it; the slab table on this page shows the current figures. The employer registers, deducts monthly and deposits by the 20th of the following month. Kuzhu applies the slab per employee and produces the monthly return summary.
Do you have a team in Bengaluru?
No. Kuzhu is built and supported from Udaipur in Rajasthan. Bengaluru implementations run over video in two to four weeks: import, configuration, training and a parallel payroll reconciled to the rupee before switching. Support afterwards is by phone, WhatsApp and email in English or Hindi, with the same team throughout.
Is the free plan enough for a startup?
Up to 15 employees, yes: employee records, attendance with mobile punch, leave, documents and the app, free for life with no card. Shifts come with Starter; payroll, recruitment and performance with Growth; API access with Enterprise. Paid plans are priced per employee and quoted on your headcount, with a 14-day trial.
Does it integrate with the tools our engineering team uses?
There is a REST API with webhooks for joiner, leaver and change events, and exports in your accounting and bank-upload formats, so provisioning and finance can be automated. Attendance can also come from biometric devices or the app. API access is included on the Enterprise plan.
Also written for
Every industry and city
See it on your numbers
Thirty minutes, your payroll
Tell us how HR runs today and roughly how many people you have. We show you the same thing your team would use on Monday, and we say so if it does not fit.
- No card, no contract, nothing installed
- A parallel payroll reconciled before you switch
- Support in Hindi and English, on the phone
Or WhatsApp us on +91 82093 73274