India · South Asia
Moving to Kochi
Kochi quick facts
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South Asia
Economy
World Bank · 2025Religion
% of populationCIA World Factbook / national censuses
Cost of living in Kochi
Can you move to India?
Pick your passport to see whether you can enter India — and what it takes to stay.
Entry rules come from github.com/imorte/passport-index-data, updated 17 February 2026. They change without notice — confirm with the official immigration service before booking.
Getting set up in India
Employment visa, e-FRRO, and the FRRO that lives at the airport
India has no nomad or freelance route. Salaried work requires an employer-sponsored employment visa with a minimum annual salary, applied for from your country of residence before travel. The fourteen-day registration clock starts at the arrival stamp, and PAN, banking, a SIM and a tenancy all sit behind that registration.
Read the full step-by-step guideLicences, the Kerala RTO, and a city where the ferry beats the car
A valid foreign licence with an International Driving Permit covers you for up to a year from arrival or until your visa expires, whichever comes first, after which an Indian licence from the Kerala MVD is required. Kochi's geography — a city built across islands and peninsulas linked by bridges — means the road distance between two points is often three times the water distance, which is precisely why the Water Metro exists and why it is frequently the faster option.
Read the full step-by-step guidePAN, resident versus NRE, and the state that invented Indian remittance banking
PAN first, then the account, then UPI. Which account you may open turns on your residential status under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, a different test from your visa and different again from income tax residence. Someone employed in India is generally FEMA-resident and takes an ordinary resident savings account. In Kerala, where a huge share of the customer base is genuinely non-resident, staff instinctively reach for an NRE or NRO product — be explicit that you are not one.
Read the full step-by-step guideThe best health system in India, and the diseases the monsoon brings
Employer group cover plus a top-up is the standard arrangement, and Kochi's private hospitals are among the best in India for a city of its size. What is different here is the surrounding system: Kerala has the country's highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality and a public network that works, alongside disease surveillance so good that it finds outbreaks — including Nipah — that other states would miss entirely.
Read the full step-by-step guideAn Indian SIM on a foreign passport, and Kerala's excellent coverage
Every Indian SIM requires full identity verification, and for a foreign national that means passport, visa, photographs and local address proof, followed by a tele-verification step before outgoing calls and data activate. Buy from a company-owned store. Once live, the number becomes the key to UPI, banking one-time passwords and effectively every service you use — and Kerala has some of the best network coverage in India to run it on.
Read the full step-by-step guideThe April year, RNOR, and Kerala's professional tax on your payslip
You are resident if present 182 days or more in the financial year, or 60 days plus 365 across the preceding four. Most new arrivals then fall into RNOR — Resident but Not Ordinarily Resident — for two or three years, during which foreign income is generally outside Indian scope. The new regime — section 115BAC under the old Income-tax Act 1961, and section 202 of the Income-tax Act 2025 that replaced it on 1 April 2026 — is the default, and the old regime must be actively elected. Kochi is not one of the cities that gets the higher house rent allowance rate, which weakens the old regime here.
Read the full step-by-step guideEach guide has verified costs, timelines, required documents, and the non-obvious gotchas — sourced from official government pages. Last verified August 2026.
Essential Malayalam phrases
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What to know before you go
Kerala's public health system is genuinely usable, which is not true anywhere else in India
ImportantKerala has India's highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality and the country's most functional government hospital network, staffed by doctors who are often the same people you would see privately. Foreign nationals are still outside the public insurance schemes and will normally pay, but the practical point is that in a genuine emergency the nearest government hospital in Ernakulam is a reasonable destination rather than a last resort. In Delhi or Mumbai that calculation is the other way round.
Register on e-FRRO within 14 days — the Kochi FRRO sits inside the airport
CriticalIf your visa runs beyond 180 days you must register within fourteen days of the arrival stamp. Kochi has one of India's fifteen full Foreigners Regional Registration Offices, located in the Airlines Building at Cochin International Airport rather than in the city — a twenty-five kilometre trip from Ernakulam if you are called in. The application itself is online at e-FRRO and requires proof of a Kerala address, so accommodation has to come first.
Apply for PAN in week one on Form 49AA
CriticalThe Permanent Account Number gates salary, banking and your tax return. Foreign nationals must use Form 49AA — the free instant e-PAN requires an Aadhaar you cannot get for six months. Without a PAN your employer must deduct tax at a substantially higher rate, recoverable only by filing.
Kerala property prices are set by the Gulf, not by Kerala salaries
ImportantKerala received close to a fifth of all inward remittances to India in 2023-24, second only to Maharashtra, overwhelmingly from Gulf migration. That money went into land and houses for four decades, with the result that Kochi land and apartment prices sit far above what local incomes would support and well above cities with much larger economies. Rents are more reasonable than purchase prices, which is a strong argument for renting long before considering buying here.
Alcohol is a state monopoly and the retail experience reflects that
Good to knowKerala sells alcohol through the state-owned Beverages Corporation and licensed bars in higher-category hotels. There are no ordinary off-licences, outlet queues are a local institution, and dry days apply — though the 2025-26 policy has eased several of them and permitted service in some categories that were previously excluded. None of this is prohibition, but it is not a market you can navigate by instinct.
Two monsoons, and the first one arrives before anywhere else in India
ImportantKerala is where the southwest monsoon makes landfall, around the start of June, and it is heavy. A second northeast monsoon follows in October and November. Kochi is low-lying, built across islands and canals, and the 2018 Kerala floods are recent memory. Ask specifically whether a prospective address floods, check the ground-floor question, and expect four months a year where an umbrella is not optional.
Top industries & employers
Information technology
Infopark, SmartCity Kochi, TCS, Wipro, IBS Software, EY, Cognizant
Infopark at Kakkanad is Kerala's largest IT cluster and IBS Software — a global aviation and travel systems company — was founded and is headquartered here rather than in Bengaluru.
Ports, shipping & shipbuilding
Cochin Port Authority, Vallarpadam ICTT, Cochin Shipyard, DP World
Cochin Shipyard built INS Vikrant, India's first indigenous aircraft carrier, and the Vallarpadam international container transhipment terminal is India's largest single-operator container facility.
Healthcare
Amrita Institute, Aster Medcity, Lakeshore, Rajagiri, Lisie
Kochi has an unusually deep private hospital sector for a city of its size, drawing patients from across Kerala and from the Gulf diaspora returning for treatment.
Retail, trade & the diaspora economy
Lulu Group, Muthoot, Manappuram, Federal Bank, South Indian Bank
Kerala's Gulf connection produced a distinctive corporate layer — Lulu, the Abu Dhabi-headquartered retail group, is Malayali-founded, and Kerala's gold-loan and private banking sector is a national force.
Spices, seafood & agri-export
Spices Board India, Kerala seafood exporters, tea and rubber trade
Kochi has been the centre of the pepper and spice trade for two thousand years and the Spices Board is still headquartered here. Seafood is one of Kerala's largest export categories.
Petrochemicals & industry
BPCL Kochi Refinery, FACT, Cochin Special Economic Zone
The BPCL refinery at Ambalamugal is one of India's largest, and the surrounding petrochemical cluster is the state's biggest single industrial complex.
Where to go in Kochi
Fort Kochi & the Chinese fishing nets
Neighborhood · Fort Kochi peninsula
Portuguese, Dutch and British layers on a single sea-facing peninsula, with cantilevered shore-operated fishing nets along the beach.
Local tip: St Francis Church here is where Vasco da Gama was originally buried before the body was moved to Lisbon. The fish stalls beside the nets will cook what you buy at the shack behind — agree the price of both the fish and the cooking before handing anything over.
Mattancherry & Jew Town
Culture · Mattancherry, south of Fort Kochi
The Paradesi Synagogue of 1568, the Dutch Palace murals, and a lane of spice warehouses that still smell of pepper and ginger.
Local tip: The synagogue's floor is laid with hand-painted Chinese tiles, no two identical, and it is closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays. Go on a weekday morning before the cruise passengers. The working spice godowns are a street back and will let you in if you ask politely.
The Kochi Water Metro
Landmark · Vyttila, High Court and ten island terminals
India's first battery-electric ferry network, linking ten islands across the backwaters on a metro-style timetable and ticket.
Local tip: This is public transport that happens to be one of the best boat rides in India, and it costs a few rupees. Take the High Court to Vypin or the Vyttila to Kakkanad run at dusk. It is not a tourist cruise — locals commute on it, which is the point.
Marine Drive & the Kochi-Muziris Biennale
Culture · Ernakulam waterfront and Fort Kochi
A harbour-front promenade in the city, and the venue for South Asia's largest contemporary art exhibition every other winter.
Local tip: The Biennale takes over disused Fort Kochi warehouses from December to April in its years. Even outside the Biennale, Aspinwall House and the Pepper House café are open and worth a morning. Buy the multi-venue pass rather than paying at each site.
Cherai Beach & Vypin
Nature · Vypin island, 25 km north
A long shallow beach with backwater on one side and the Arabian Sea on the other, reachable by ferry rather than by driving round.
Local tip: Take the ferry from Fort Kochi to Vypin with a scooter rather than driving the long way through Edappally. The stretch where the backwater comes within a hundred metres of the sea is the reason to go, and the toddy shops along the road are the genuine article.
Kadamakkudy islands
Hidden gemNature · 12 km north of Ernakulam
A cluster of tiny inhabited islands laced with paddy fields, prawn farms and Chinese nets, twenty minutes from the city and almost unvisited.
Local tip: Go on a scooter at sunrise and simply follow the narrow road across the causeways until it runs out. There is nothing organised here — no ticket, no guide, no café — which is exactly why it is the best thing near Kochi. Post-monsoon, when the paddy is flooded, is the moment.
Emergency numbers in Kochi
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