India: moving from services QA to a product / remote QA role — how?

5 years in a services company in Pune, mostly manual + some Selenium. Comp is fine but the work is Jira-ticket-shaped and I want to grow. Trying to move into a product company or a remote role with a foreign employer. Every job spec asks for "modern stack" (Playwright, k6, contract testing) that I don't get exposure to in my current project. For folks who made this jump from Indian services to product / remote: what actually worked? Side projects? Certifications? Open source? Referrals? How did you close the "modern tools" gap when your day job doesn't use them?