Hiring a Performance Marketing Agency in India from the US, UK or UAE

By the Monastic Media teamUpdated 26 Oct 20267 min read

First decide which market the ads are for

Founders abroad hire Indian agencies for two very different jobs. Some are NRI or Gulf founders selling to Indian customers and want a team on the ground. Others want an Indian team to run ads in their home market. The checks are different for each, so be clear about it on the first call.

An Indian D2C agency is strongest when the buyer is Indian. It knows COD behaviour, festive peaks, tier 2 demand and which hooks land in Hindi or English. Running ads for a US or UK buyer is a different job, and the agency has to show it can do it, not just say so.

Time zones: what the overlap really looks like

India runs on IST (UTC+5:30) all year with no daylight saving, so the gap to the UK and US moves twice a year. Plan your weekly call around the real overlap, and push everything else to written updates.

The UAE is the easiest. Dubai is 1.5 hours behind India and both now work Monday to Friday, so the working day lines up almost fully. The US West Coast is the hardest: there is almost no shared working hour, so the agency must work well without waiting for you.

Own the accounts before anyone starts

Across borders, getting access back is slower and harder to enforce. So set up ownership on day one, before the first ad goes live. The agency gets access as a partner. It never owns anything.

• Business Manager in your name, with you as admin. The agency is added as a partner, not as the owner.
• Ad accounts, pixel and dataset created under your Business Manager. If the agency offers its own ad account to start faster, say no.
• Google Ads and Merchant Center under your own login, with the agency added as a user or through its manager account link.
• Store admin access through a collaborator or staff account, never your owner login.
• Payment method on the ad account is your own card or billing line. Meta and Google bill you directly. Ad spend should not go through the agency.
• Tracking set up properly from the start. Ask how they will set up the Conversions API (our CAPI guide) so the numbers you see from abroad match your store.

Ads videos: who appears on camera

On Meta, the ad itself does much of the targeting. A video that feels local gets watched. One that feels foreign gets scrolled past, however good the edit is.

If you sell to India, this works in your favour. An Indian team can script, shoot and edit with Indian creators, Indian homes and Indian languages, and change the ad quickly when a hook stops working. Ask to see recent performance ads videos and lifestyle ads videos from your category, and ask how many new ads they can make for you each month.

If you sell in the US or UK, ask the hard question directly: who will appear on camera, and where are they? Editing, scripting and media buying can be done from India. Creators usually need to match your buyer's accent and setting. A good agency will tell you plainly which parts it can shoot itself and which footage you will need to source locally.

Paying an Indian agency from abroad

Payment is simpler than most founders expect. The agency invoices your company abroad and you pay by international bank transfer or a cross-border payment service. The agency then gets a foreign inward remittance record from its bank as proof.

On GST: when the client is outside India, the place of supply is outside India and payment comes in convertible foreign exchange, the service usually counts as an export of services. That is zero-rated. An agency that has filed a Letter of Undertaking (LUT) for the year can invoice you without IGST. Ask whether their LUT is filed for the current year, and check that the invoice says export of services under LUT. If you are an Indian entity, normal GST applies instead.

If you sell to Indian customers through an Indian company, you will usually be billed like any Indian client. The agency should also check that your store has an Indian payment gateway and a working COD flow before scaling spend.

Contract clauses that matter across borders

• Who owns the creative. Final videos, raw footage, scripts and creator usage rights should be yours, with the usage period written down.
• Notice period and handover. A written exit: access removed, assets listed, campaigns documented, within a fixed number of days.
• Governing law and dispute route. Pick one country's law and one way to settle disputes. Leaving it vague costs more later.
• Data handling. Customer lists you upload for audiences are personal data. Ask for a clause covering how they are stored and deleted, in line with your local rules and India's data protection law.
• Who can change spend. Agree a daily spend ceiling the agency can work within while you are asleep, and what needs your written approval.

How to judge the agency in the first month

Distance makes it tempting to judge on calls and decks. Judge on what you can check yourself in the account.

• You can log in and see every campaign, ad and number without asking anyone.
• A daily update arrives at the same time every day, with the same metrics: spend, revenue, ROAS, cost per purchase, CTR, CPC and purchases.
• Ads reported as purchases match orders in your store within a reasonable gap. If they do not, read why Meta purchases and store orders differ.
• New ads videos reach the account on the schedule they promised, not just one hero video.
• They plan around your local sale calendar: Diwali and the festive season for India, White Friday and Ramadan for the UAE, Black Friday and Boxing Day for the US and UK.
• When something breaks overnight, the written update explains what happened and what was changed, without you having to ask.

How Monastic Media helps

One in-house team in Surat scripts, shoots and edits the ads videos and runs the Meta and Google campaigns they go into, so the people who see the numbers make the next ad. See our performance marketing

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