It's not uncommon anywhere where companies have to invest a large amount in employee training. It's pretty common if you're doing a professional qualification

It's not uncommon anywhere where companies have to invest a large amount in employee training. It's pretty common if you're doing a professional qualification (accountancy, etc.) with training and exam costs paid for by your employer, that if you quit before a set period you have to pay back your employer for the amount they invested in you. In countries like India companies have to pay a lot to train new inexperienced graduates and staff turnover is a huge issue far more than in western countries. Many western companies that hire graduates just write-off training expenses when a recent hire quits which they can afford to do so because it happens relatively rarely, but if it was a frequent occurrence like in India it would be economically unviable to do so.