Who's Hiring Indians for Japan, and Who's Scamming Them

India Japan Kaizen — Career Bridge Series, Part 3

Part 1 of this series mapped five industries actually hiring Indians into Japan. Part 2 went deep on the visa process itself — the April 2026 N2 language rule, three newly-approved SSW sectors, and Ikusei Shuro, the status replacing technical intern training from 2027 — and promised a closer look at who is actually doing the hiring, and how to tell a licensed agency from a scam. A handful of named companies now have real placement numbers attached to them, India's own government keeps a public registry most candidates have never heard of, and Japan's industry body keeps a matching one on its side. None of it is unified into a single checklist yet — but for the first time in this series, the pieces to build one actually exist.

The Caregiving Pipeline Finally Has Names Attached

Part 1 called caregiving the industry with the most acute shortage and the most structured way in; by the week this is published, it's also the industry with the clearest list of who is actually doing the hiring. Mumbai-based BorderPlus — co-founded by Mayank Kumar (previously of upGrad) and Ayush Mathur (previously of OYO Europe) — runs a training-first placement model out of eight centres across India, including Pune, Kochi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Delhi, and has already placed more than 500 nurses and caregivers into overseas roles; the company has stated a goal of placing up to 50,000 Indian caregivers in Japan specifically over the next four to five years, backed by a $7 million round led by Owl Ventures reported in February 2025. Separately, Japanese elder-care operator Sompo Care has run its own training centre near Delhi since 2024 — a nine-month program combining Japanese-language instruction with hands-on caregiving practice on imported Japanese equipment — and its first cohort of nine trainees reportedly saw eight pass Japan's SSW skills exam, with placements at Japanese facilities expected around mid-2026; Sompo has stated a target of roughly 100 placements a year, building toward 1,000 by 2040. A third name worth knowing: NSDC International signed a memorandum with Kyoto-based Kyoshin Co., an education group with about 25,000 students nationwide, specifically to feed the care-sector SSW pipeline. None of these three existed as a hiring answer when Part 1 published; all three do now.

IT Hiring Just Split Into Two Different Stories

On the IT side, the picture is more easily confused than clarified, so it's worth separating carefully. On 23 June 2026, Quess Corp — through its Quess International Services arm — joined Japan's IGS (Institution for a Global Society) and Indo-Pacific Advisory to launch an Indo-Japan GCC corridor, aimed at helping Japanese companies build AI, cybersecurity and digital-transformation hubs inside India, citing a projected shortfall of up to 790,000 IT and engineering professionals in Japan by 2030 and Tokyo's broader pledge to invest ¥5 trillion in India by 2027. That's a genuinely large hiring story — but it's one about Japanese-linked jobs built in Bengaluru and Pune, not about Indians relocating to Japan. The smaller but more literal counterpart is Fukuoka City's own initiative: a prefectural-government-backed program supporting local Fukuoka firms hiring Indian IT engineers directly, with placements expected to begin around April 2026. For a reader deciding where to point a job search, the distinction matters more than the headline number — one of these is a Japan-linked career built from India, the other is an actual move.

The Verification System Most Candidates Have Never Heard Of

Part 2 named NSDC — the National Skill Development Corporation — as the body administering India's side of the SSW memorandum since 2021. What Part 2 didn't cover: NSDC is also India's designated monitoring agency for the older Technical Intern Training Program, and it periodically empanels a public list of licensed Sending Organisations through open tenders — currently more than twenty firms, including AKAL Information Systems Limited (a Sending Organisation since 2018, which has gone on to run its own Akal Japanese Academy), ARMS Incorporation in New Delhi (also licensed since 2018), and ASV Resources Private Limited, operating as a consortium with Raj Group Limited and KC Consulting Services out of Hyderabad. The current list is published on NSDC's own sending-organisation page. On the Japan side, OTIT — the Organization for Technical Intern Training — receives the matching list of ministry-approved Sending Organisations from India and publishes it as well. Checking a recruiter's name against both lists, not just one, is the actual test; a name that appears on neither is not a licensed agency, whatever it calls itself.

What a Scam Actually Looks Like

Japan is not on India's Emigration Check Required list the way Gulf and Southeast Asian destinations are, which means the commonly repeated advice to check a recruiter against emigrate.gov.in's registered-agent list doesn't fully apply to this specific corridor — for TITP and SSW placements, NSDC's and OTIT's lists are the checks that matter. The scale of the problem these registries exist to prevent is documented by JP-MIRAI, a Japan-based industry-and-NGO platform with roughly 800 member organisations, which has found that technical intern trainees across sending countries pay an average of around ¥540,000 in pre-departure fees, with documented cases exceeding ¥1,000,000 — debt loads serious enough to trap workers with a single employer regardless of conditions, which is precisely what Part 2's Ikusei Shuro reform is meant to fix going forward. JP-MIRAI launched a Fair and Ethical Recruitment Initiative in 2024 to certify agencies that charge no fee or a capped one, and visited India in July 2025, where Indian sending companies reportedly asked how to get certified themselves. A few concrete red flags worth checking before paying anyone a rupee:

• A large upfront 'training' or 'visa processing' fee demanded before any written contract exists.
• A job offer naming no verifiable company — or a company that doesn't appear on OTIT's or NSDC's published lists.
• Communication only through WhatsApp or a personal Facebook account, with no official company email domain.
• Pressure to pay before a skills test or JLPT sitting has even been scheduled.
• Refusal to provide a Sending Organisation registration number on request — a licensed agency has nothing to hide here.

The Same Number, Told Three Different Ways

One pattern is worth flagging on its own: the figure '50,000' shows up three times in the past six months, attached to three different promises. BorderPlus has its own target of up to 50,000 Indian caregivers specifically, over four to five years. NSDC's May 2026 memorandum with Tokyo's Fourth Valley Concierge Corporation — which also introduces a 'Credibility Check' background-verification system through what it calls NSDC Trust — separately targets at least 50,000 skilled Indian workers across all sectors, over five years. And a 25 May 2026 seminar in Tokyo, organised by the Embassy of India together with ASEAN ONE and ASEAN GROUP for roughly 250 Japanese company representatives, discussed a broader people exchange of 50,000 over ten years, spanning manufacturing, caregiving, construction, IT and more. These aren't the same pledge restated three times — they're three different organisations, three different sectors or scopes, and three different timeframes that happen to share a round number. Worth asking any recruiter citing '50,000' which one, if any, they're actually operating under.

What's Still Missing

BorderPlus, Sompo Care and NSDC's partnership with Kyoshin are three real, named options in a sector Part 1 flagged as having the weakest hiring pipeline relative to its shortage — genuine progress in six months. But they still cover one industry out of the five or more this series has mapped; nothing comparably named exists yet for hospitality, and most manufacturing SSW sectors remain as anonymous as they were in Part 1. More importantly, nothing today cross-references NSDC's list against OTIT's in one place, in a language and format built for an individual candidate rather than a compliance officer — so the actual verification work still falls on each applicant, one search at a time.

If you're an Indian candidate who has been contacted by a recruiter for a Japan-bound role and isn't sure whether to trust them, or you represent a licensed Sending Organisation, training centre, or Japanese employer that wants to be found by candidates directly — get in touch. Helping people tell the real doorway from the fake one is exactly the kind of work India Japan Kaizen exists to do.

This is Part 3 of India Japan Kaizen's Career Bridge Series, publishing weekly. Part 4 will look at what happens after the offer letter — typical salary bands by industry, and the upfront costs, like reikin (key money) on a first apartment and relocation support, that catch most new arrivals by surprise.