How Dewave Hired Compliantly in Bhutan With No Entity and No HR Team

About Dewave GMBH

Dewave GmbH is a Swiss AI transformation agency, founded in 2021, helping clients across Europe build and optimize their digital presence through applied AI. The agency's core focus is AI transformation: agentic content and GEO/SEO systems, and custom AI applications and e-commerce solutions for agentic commerce. With a team of around 15 and no dedicated HR function, Dewave operates lean: founders and engineers doing the core work. Remo Girard, founder and CEO, manages international employment decisions directly. dewave.iundf.com

The challenge

Dewave's path to Bhutan started with an investment decision. The company had backed a startup whose key developer was already based there, employed through an arrangement that was no longer viable. When that changed, Dewave wanted to bring the developer on properly: a real employment contract, compliant payroll, and the tax and insurance coverage that Bhutanese law requires.

"We had invested in a startup, and they were working with a guy from Bhutan. He was employed through another company, and we decided to give him a real contract. That's where this journey started," Remo says.

The problem was that Bhutan sits far outside the standard EOR footprint. Most global payroll providers do not operate there. Those that do often have limited local infrastructure and limited familiarity with the local regulations covering leave entitlements, tax obligations, and provident fund contributions that vary significantly from more commonly served markets.

"There were a lot of uncertainties about how payroll worked in Bhutan: the leave policy, the taxes, the insurance, all the payroll topics in general. There was also some misinformation coming from the local provider," Remo recalls.

Dewave had no legal entity in Bhutan. Setting one up was the obvious alternative, but the numbers did not work for a startup with one or two hires in mind.

What was at stake

Without a compliant employment arrangement, Dewave's developer in Bhutan would remain in a legally uncertain position: no formal contract, no tax-registered payroll, no insurance or leave entitlements managed under local law. For a small company without in-house legal or HR capacity, that exposure carried real risk to the employee's rights and to the company's cross-border compliance posture.

The alternative was Bhutanese entity establishment. Remo investigated what that would involve. Beyond the administrative load of government filings, local agency coordination, office infrastructure, and an HR hire to manage it, there was a minimum capital requirement.

"Creating a legal entity in Bhutan involves a lot of administrative work: government filings, a minimum fee you're required to invest, all of it. Just for one employee, that doesn't make sense in the beginning, or even for two. You need a certain number of people before founding a legal entity actually pays off," Remo says.

His all-in estimate for setting up the entity came to approximately €50,000. For a 15-person startup employing one or two developers abroad, that figure was difficult to justify and would have locked capital that was needed elsewhere.

Why they chose Rivermate

Remo found Rivermate through a Google search. What distinguished Rivermate in his evaluation was not a platform feature list. It was the character of the contact. At the time, Rivermate was itself an early-stage company, and the engagement reflected that: direct, consultative, and personal. There was no help desk, no script, and no deflection when Bhutan came up.

Bhutan presented genuine unknowns for both parties at the outset: how local payroll processes worked in practice, what the correct tax treatment was, how leave entitlements were structured, and what insurance obligations applied. Rivermate engaged with those unknowns directly, working through the regulatory detail with a local partner on the ground. That willingness to dig into the specifics and to keep working when the picture was not yet clear was the deciding factor.

"There were a lot of uncertainties about how payroll worked in Bhutan, even on your side in the beginning. But you were the ones digging into the details, figuring out how the taxes and everything worked, and you worked it out together with a local partner. That human touch is what we really liked. It's good to have a partner who solves problems instead of just sticking to defined processes," he explains.

How Rivermate helped

Rivermate established a compliant employment arrangement for Dewave's first Bhutanese hire, navigating local payroll rules, tax obligations, leave entitlements, and insurance requirements with a local partner. Where the regulatory picture was ambiguous or where early information from local sources proved unreliable, Rivermate worked through the discrepancies rather than leaving them for the client to manage.

As Dewave's Bhutan team grew, reaching eight total contracts over the course of the engagement, Rivermate managed each new hire and, where needed, each termination. On the termination side, Rivermate's approach was consistently transparent: the client was kept fully informed throughout, with no unexplained delays and a clear process from instruction to close.

For new hires, the employer-side workflow has now reduced to a single action: submitting the new employee's role and salary data. Rivermate handles everything from there. Contracts are prepared, payroll is set up, and the process typically completes within a week.

"Once everything is set up, hiring someone takes me maybe half an hour. I send the new role and salary data, and that's it, you take care of the rest. In general it takes one to two weeks before the hire is complete, and the fastest we've managed was one week," Remo explains.

Jamil Linao, Finance Manager, Dewave's primary point of contact throughout the engagement, was central to making the relationship work in practice. His availability and speed of response made a practical difference on an account where questions sometimes needed fast answers.

What this means for similar companies

For small companies hiring in niche or complex countries, Dewave's experience shows there is a practical alternative to setting up a local entity or taking compliance risks. With Rivermate as the Employer of Record, compliant international employment becomes possible without major upfront investment, local admin, or long-term lock-in.

For lean startups and scale-ups, this can make a real operational difference. Instead of spending days on paperwork, local requirements, and government portals, teams can keep international hiring manageable even without a dedicated HR function. Rivermate also gives companies the flexibility to adjust as countries, headcount, and business needs change, which is especially valuable when hiring plans shift over time.