Do you have a UK office?
No, and we are transparent about it. Decipher Consultancy Services is a Gurugram India-based firm. Our founder, engineering team and delivery leadership are all in India. We do not currently operate a London or Manchester office. For UK clients we fly in for kickoff, quarterly reviews and go-live workshops when the engagement calls for it. Day-to-day work runs on a dedicated Slack or Teams channel with 4 to 5 hours of daily real-time BST overlap. UK clients typically pick this model because they get senior AI engineering at India rates without paying City of London office costs baked into the invoice.
How do you handle time zones between India and the UK?
BST is 4.5 hours behind IST in summer, GMT is 5.5 hours behind in winter. Our India engineering team is live from 12:30 PM IST (8:00 AM BST) through roughly 8:30 PM IST (4:00 PM BST), which gives UK clients a solid 4 to 5 hour real-time overlap window covering the entire UK morning and most of the afternoon. Slack or Teams, Zoom, code reviews, pairing and design calls all happen inside that window. For urgent production incidents outside the overlap, on-call rotation runs 24/7 with 15-minute acknowledgment.
Can you invoice in GBP?
Yes. UK clients are typically invoiced in GBP or USD from our India entity via SWIFT wire transfer. GST-compliant Indian tax invoices are provided which UK AP teams accept as vendor invoices for VAT reverse-charge purposes (services from an overseas supplier). We do not add Indian GST on export invoices for UK clients, and there is no UK VAT to charge under reverse-charge rules. Payment terms are net-15 or net-30. Purchase-order-driven billing is available for larger clients.
Does IR35 apply when you work with us?
No. IR35 applies to individual contractors treated as disguised employees. We are a company providing project-based professional services under an MSA and SOW with fixed deliverables, our own engineering pod, our own PM and our own tools. That is outside-IR35 by structure. We are happy to walk your finance or tax adviser through the engagement model on a call. For clients migrating from a personal-service-company contractor to a project-based vendor, this is one of the cleanest ways to get AI work done without IR35 exposure.
Are you familiar with UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018?
Yes. UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 principles are the baseline for every UK engagement. We support DPIA and ROPA documentation, act as data processor under a signed DPA, help write ICO-friendly privacy notices for AI features, and align sub-processor lists to your controller obligations. For NHS clients we align with NHS Digital DSPT and DCB0129 / DCB0160 clinical safety documentation where relevant. Data residency in UK or EU is available via AWS eu-west-2 (London), Azure UK South and Google Cloud europe-west2.
Can you work with FCA regulated fintechs?
Yes. We build AI for FCA regulated fintechs (payments, lending, wealth, EMIs, small banks) with the model risk documentation, explainability logs, audit trails and consumer duty considerations that a regulator conversation requires. We complete standard security questionnaires, support your third-party vendor assessment process and produce the documentation your compliance team needs to defend the AI system in a supervisory review. Open Banking PSD2 integrations, KYC and AML automation, credit decisioning and fraud detection are common builds.
Who owns the code and models?
You do. All code, model weights, fine-tuned adapters, prompts, evaluation datasets and infrastructure-as-code we produce for you is your work-for-hire IP under an MSA governed by English law (or Indian law if you prefer). Everything lives in your GitHub, GitLab or Azure DevOps organisation. When the engagement ends, you keep everything. We do not resell your data, prompts or models to anyone. Full IP assignment is the default, not an upsell.
