20 Years of TMS: From a Mumbai Staffing Firm to a Pan-India HR Partner

20 Years of TMS: From a Mumbai Staffing Firm to a Pan-India HR Partner

Team Management Services (TMS) was founded in Mumbai in 2006 as a small staffing firm with one promise: get the compliance right, every month. Twenty years later, TMS supports 450+ clients and 8,500+ employees on its payroll across 100+ Indian cities. This is the story of how that happened, and what has stayed the same along the way.

2006: A boutique staffing firm with a compliance-first promise

TMS started in Mumbai as a boutique staffing firm. At the time, most staffing vendors filed PF and ESIC paperwork and hoped nothing came back. TMS took a different line: file it, check it ourselves, and treat every client’s statutory exposure as our own.

2013: New leadership and a wider view

In 2013, Abhijit Divekar took the lead at TMS. He came back to India from Deloitte in the USA, with an IT engineering degree from Mumbai University and a Master’s in Management from the University of Illinois at Chicago. As Managing Partner, he set the firm’s strategy and started its international work.

From staffing to a full HR partner

Clients kept asking TMS to take on more of the HR work around their people. Over the years, the firm added one service line at a time:

• Third-party contract staffing: staff on the TMS payroll, with PF, ESIC and labour law compliance handled.
• Payroll outsourcing and statutory compliance for companies that keep their own employees.
• Talent acquisition, from permanent hiring to senior and CXO search.
• Employer of Record (EOR) for foreign companies hiring in India without their own entity.
• Apprenticeship programmes under NAPS and NATS, GCC set-up support and HR consulting.

Growing the footprint

TMS still runs from its head office in Ghatkopar East, Mumbai. A branch office in Vadodara, Gujarat now acts as a regional delivery and compliance hub.

Today TMS works across 100+ cities in all 28 states and 8 union territories, for clients in 15+ industries, from IT and manufacturing to BFSI, pharma, retail and logistics.

Two decades of changing labour law

Indian HR compliance has changed more in these twenty years than in the fifty before. A few of the shifts TMS has worked through with its clients:

• Online filing: PF and ESIC moved from paper to online returns and challans.
• The four Labour Codes: the Code on Wages, the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security and the OSH Code came into force on 21 November 2025, replacing 29 older laws.
• ESIC on Code wages: since 21 November 2025, ESIC coverage is checked on wages, not gross pay.
• A higher PF wage ceiling: the PF wage ceiling rose from Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 a month from 17 September 2026.

Each change meant new payroll rules, new letters and new checks for every client. It is also why TMS publishes free HR guides and calculators, so employers can see the impact before the payroll runs.

The people behind the numbers

TMS is run by a small senior team with more than 35 years at the firm between them:

• Abhijit Divekar, Managing Partner, leading TMS since 2013.
• Makarand Gaikwad, Business HR Head, 13+ years at TMS, who leads senior and CXO hiring after a hospitality career with Oberoi and Accor Hotels in the UK, Singapore and India.
• Vishakha Bhosale, HR Leader for Staffing, 13+ years at TMS, who runs HR for the 8,500+ contract employees on the TMS payroll.

What has not changed

Some things are the same as in 2006:

• A senior HR person on every account, not a junior hand-off.
• No sub-contracting of client work.
• One point of contact and one monthly invoice.
• Compliance treated as the core of the service, not an add-on.

20 years at a glance

Thank you

To every client, employee and partner who has worked with us over these twenty years: thank you. If you are planning your next hires in India, talk to our team or read more about TMS.