Work From Home in India: Will corporates consider?

India Today.in spoke to Eight corporates across India, all of which said they were open to allowing employees to work from home. While most companies already have the infrastructure in place for remote work, entrepreneurs said managers would have to do much of the heavy lifting to ensure productivity, coordination and team morale are maintained.

“Patriotism is not only about the willingness to sacrifice one’s life on the border. In these times, it is about living responsibly and fulfilling our duties to the nation in our daily lives,” Narendra Modi said.

“In the current situation, we must place great emphasis on saving foreign exchange,” he added.

The Prime Minister asked Indian citizens to make adjustments over the next few months to deal with the situation that has recently emerged due to the energy crisis and its impact on the economy.

For millions of Indians, the Prime Minister’s message sounded less like an advisory and more like a sudden flashback.

The empty roads. The office laptops balancing on dining tables. The “You’re on mute” meetings. The camera-off culture. The rise of hybrid work. And of course, the nationwide discovery that half the country’s internet problems begin exactly five minutes before a presentation.

Oil prices are once again becoming the world’s favourite source of anxiety. Shipping routes are under pressure.

Airlines are watching fuel costs closely. Economists are discussing supply chains again, a phrase many hoped had retired with 2021.

India, which imports more than 85 per cent of its crude oil requirements, is especially vulnerable whenever global energy markets begin shaking.

Welcoming the move, the Forum For IT Employees urged employers to revive the work-from-home model, online meetings and video conferencing “to reduce fuel consumption and support the nation during the global energy crisis.”

“We request all IT companies to allow WFH wherever feasible. This will reduce traffic, save fuel, improve employee well-being and support the national interest,” the organisation wrote on X.

Which brings India back to an old question wearing a new jacket: can the country return to large-scale hybrid work once again? Is India ready now?

Also, the larger question is whether corporates and other industries will allow this to happen.

The answer is complicated.

HOW WILL INDIA DO THIS AGAIN?

During the pandemic, India ran one of the largest work-from-home experiments in history. Remote work in organised sectors jumped from under 5 per cent before COVID-19 to nearly 70 per cent at its peak across IT and digital industries.

Dining tables became offices, video calls became conference rooms, and companies that once insisted productivity only happened under office lights somehow survived remotely for two years.

Now, experts say the technology is ready. Cloud systems exist, hybrid tools are normalised and employees already know the system. The real question is no longer infrastructure, it is trust.

“In the post-pandemic landscape, infrastructure readiness to support hybrid or remote work is well established across organizations in India. However, the complexities of transitioning to a 100% remote work model are not unique to India but reflects a broader global phenomenon,” says Ritika Malik, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Amway India.

But another question looms, what about the managers who run the teams and oversee the day-to-day functioning inside organisation.

Can Indian managers accept productivity without physical presence? And perhaps more importantly, if employees work from home again, who will attend meetings that could have been emails?

“Indian organisations today are far more prepared for hybrid and remote work models than they were a few years ago,” said Sonica Aron, Founder and Managing Partner at Marching Sheep. According to her, accelerated digital adoption and changing employee expectations have reshaped workplace realities across organised sectors.

She pointed out that support functions such as finance, marketing and legal operations can function almost entirely remotely in the long term, while departments like HR, sales and research may continue with hybrid structures.

“Indian companies are, in substance, far more prepared for long term remote or hybrid work arrangements than is often acknowledged in public discourse,” says Vimarsh Raina, Head, Growth & Legal, VetoAI.

“Employee monitoring is the biggest challenge in this model. Secondly, working from home is possible in a few fields but not in all the fields, like production, QA/QC, filling lines, labelling lines, and many more. Also, if one department is doing WFH and another one is doing WFO, then there is no connectivity and activities are managed properly,” adds Arpit Gupta, Managing Director, AG Organica.

A DEBATE AROUND TRUST, CULTURE AND COLLABORATIONS

Industries built around screens and software, IT, consulting, finance and Global Capability Centres, can slip into hybrid work far more easily. Their offices already live half inside laptops.

The real roadblock lies elsewhere. Factories need machines, hospitals need people, hotels need staff on the floor. In sectors like manufacturing, logistics, hospitality and healthcare, work-from-home can only stretch so far.

But even in industries where remote work is possible, hesitation lingers.

Experts say the issue is no longer Wi-Fi or Zoom calls. It is corporate mindset. “In my opinion, the biggest barrier is not technology; it’s mindset,” said Sonica Aron. “Many organisations still link visibility to productivity.”

That perhaps captures India’s unfinished work-from-home story.

COVID changed the system overnight that were built around attendance sheets, cabin culture and supervision, but not everyone became comfortable with invisible workplaces.

Dr Kanishk Agrawal of Judge Group India says sectors like IT, fintech, media and consulting are fully capable of sustaining hybrid models. Yet leaders still worry that creativity and collaboration happen better around conference tables than computer screens.

Startups feel this tension even more sharply. Vivek Prakash, CEO of Codingal, said remote work boosts individual productivity, but young companies often rely on quick, unplanned brainstorming that is harder to recreate online.

The debate also reveals another India divide, between cities with strong digital infrastructure and smaller towns still catching up.

“Sectors such as information technology, consulting, legal services, and financial operations are naturally positioned to adapt quickly because their functions are fundamentally digital and output driven,” adds Raina.

TECHNOLOGY AND FUTURE OF HYBRID WORK

While big cities adjusted to remote work fairly quickly during the pandemic, the story was very different across smaller towns and semi-urban India.

Weak internet, power cuts and cramped living spaces often turned “work from home” into “work all the time”, blurring the line between office and personal life.

Then comes the digital risk.

As employees log in from home networks and personal devices, companies handling sensitive customer or financial data face growing cybersecurity challenges.

Experts say stronger digital safeguards, encrypted systems and tighter access controls are now becoming essential.

Venkat Lakshminarasimha, Executive Director and Head of Solutions for India and the Middle East at Dexian, believes India’s future workplace will settle somewhere in the middle, not fully remote, not fully office-based.

“The debate is no longer whether remote work is possible,” he said. “The real question is how prepared companies are for it.”

He added that firms investing in technology, flexibility and employee trust are likely to handle future disruptions better and attract stronger talent.

And talent, increasingly, is where the real battle lies.

“For many employers, maintaining innovation, cross-functional collaboration, mentoring, and managerial visibility remains an important consideration, especially for younger employees and early-career professionals who benefit significantly from in-person learning and interaction,” says Shailesh Khanna, Brand Lead-Manpower, ManpowerGroup India

For younger professionals, flexibility is no longer a perk; it is part of workplace expectations. Experts say companies refusing to evolve may eventually struggle to retain skilled employees.

That shift is already visible in ManpowerGroup’s Global Talent Shortage Survey 2026, which shows organisations focusing more on flexibility, reskilling and location freedom as long-term workforce strategies.

“What still holds back the shift to hybrid or WFH culture is leadership mindset. Many Indian managers are still trained to manage attendance, not outcomes. Hybrid does not survive that mindset. Micromanagement remains a challenge in many Indian organisations,” says Vikram Raichura – Founder and CEO of helo.ai by Vivaconnect.

The larger reality is that India is probably not heading back to a full work-from-home economy.

The pandemic already showed both sides of remote work, flexibility and convenience on one hand, burnout and isolation on the other. Many new jobs have been added in this period.

Many Gen Z appreciate the jobs that have wfh opportunity. This gives them a flexibility which remains missing in orthodox professions.

Meetings shifted to Zoom screens, hiring became virtual, and office corridors briefly turned into WhatsApp groups. But once the pandemic faded, many companies slowly called employees back. Some adopted hybrid work. Others pushed for full office returns.

Now, a middle path seems to be taking shape.

A work culture where companies cut unnecessary travel, save fuel, and offer flexibility, without completely giving up office spaces.

Prime Minister Modi’s remarks may have sounded like a reminder of the Covid years, but they have quietly reopened a bigger question: what will the Indian workplace of the future actually look like?

– Ends