NOT Easy to Do Business

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# User IP address It was Sector / Industry State / UT City Response-time of officials Number of documents to be submitted Availability of information about the process Overall Rating It was an attempt to Other The problem was Other cause Details of experience Advice for others Share my story with Name Contact no Email(asc) Privacy Policy Contact me Display it
73 Prashant 49.204.110.82 Not Easy to Do Business Restaurant Uttar Pradesh Lucknow 3/5 3/5 2/5 3/5 Register property Corrupt officials who asked for bribes My whole issue was not while setting up the actual business, but while conducting it here. I run a restaurant, and officials often come and ask for bribes.

What would you do if a food inspector comes to your restaurant and demands a bribe for the inspection? If you don't comply he will file a report which claims he found 10 cockroaches at your facility, and shut you down until an investigation is completed.

You don't have a choice. If you don't pay a bribe, you can't do business in India. Government officers won't even let you register your company or get basic approvals to function!
Corruption is rife and necessary. Be prepared to bribe someone or the other. Keep it Anonymous Anonymous - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
74 Prashant 49.204.110.82 Not Easy to Do Business IT Maharashtra Mumbai 1/5 1/5 1/5 1/5 Register the business Corrupt officials who asked for bribes 1) Bribe to complete registration of proprietorship. Didn't have to give bribe for registration of private limited company thankfully.

2) No clarity on taxes. For example, when you pay someone for a service, you have to cut 10% TDS. Now, if that person is Amazon and they are a MNC with offices in India and you pay them for their servers - do you deduct TDS? Amazon wants full payment. I talked to a dozen CAs and even a friend of mine in Indian Revenue Service, all of them had no clue. But they suggested me to pay the TDS just to be safe. So I had to pay Amazon the full amount and then 10% on top of that to Dear Govt of India. 100s of scenarios like this with no clarity.

3) Investment laws are a mess. Angel investments go straight into books of account as income and are taxed. God help you if you ever receive a FDI, I finally returned the money to the investor (it was 5 lakhs), as the amount of running around I had to do was not worth it for that small amount.

4) Terrible legal system- it's effectively a joke. An acquisition for one of my products fell through because the acquirer didn't want to make disputes subject to Indian jurisdiction in the contract because, in his own words, "the Indian legal system isn't held in very high regard here (Australia)"

5) High cost of doing businesses. My gateway charges a 5% premium (so 3%+5%) for Indian businesses, because of the increased costs of operation. So, while an American company can charge only 3%, I have to settle for 8%.
So many other small little things - it's like death by a thousand cuts.
It's a tough road, starting and conducting business in India. Be prepared for a lot of hardships. Keep it Anonymous Anonymous - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
75 Prashant 49.204.110.82 Not Easy to Do Business Steel Delhi Gurgaon 1/5 1/5 1/5 1/5 Register the business Submitting the same document to different departments Government offices are a massive, massive pain to deal with. Even a bigger pain is dealing with the officials. Huge lines, obscure offices, forms that sometimes exist and sometimes don't, always angry and lethargic staff.

My co-founder and I spent an entire day collecting random forms, but in the end gave up and paid 5k to a clerk who got the job done within an hour.
Avoid spending your time and grey matter on running around, and hire somebody to do it for you. Keep it Anonymous Anonymous - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
76 Prashant 49.204.110.82 Not Easy to Do Business Investment Delhi New Delhi 1/5 1/5 1/5 1/5 Other Investment was troublesome Confusing laws that say different things As an NRI, I invested 5 lakhs in 2005 in an infrastructure fund in 2005. Due to US compliance, it was very cumbersome to keep it functional. I was in India for the last two months and was not able to liquidate it due to one excuse or the other- first it was getting documents from all corners, and then demonetisation.

Excuse 1. Signature does not match.
Excuse 2. Your application does not mention what type of bank account you have. (A cancelled copy of the cheque was attached, and it clearly stated it is a savings account)
Excuse 3. ID not attached. (Copy of PAN number was filed with the application)

So my money is stuck for another year at least.
Don't invest in Indian companies. Keep it Anonymous Anonymous - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
77 Prashant 203.122.16.122 Not Easy to Do Business Manufacturing SME Delhi Noida 2/5 1/5 1/5 2/5 Register the business
Pay taxes
Confusing laws that say different things There are various problems if one wants to start their own business in India.

Firstly, the confusion of requirements to start business. Unless you contact a broker or a CA, you cannot get required certificates done.

Secondly, taxation. There are whole lot of tax procedures which are too complicated. VAT, CST, Income tax, TDS- the list is endless. There are too many loopholes and too many things to take care of.

Every month, the tax clerk comes to our office and takes 300 rupees just to ensure we are compliant and in no trouble, and gives his signature on our monthly VAT returns. If we dont pay him, it would atleast take 2 days of our time to get things done properly.
Hire a good CA or a broker. Bribes are commonplace; don't be surprised if you're asked for one. Keep it Anonymous Anonymous - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
78 Anonymous (not verified) 203.122.16.122 Not Easy to Do Business Online sales Delhi New Delhi 1/5 1/5 1/5 1/5 Trade outside state/ country Confusing laws that say different things Amazon operates in 13 countries worldwide.

However, only amazon.in requires the seller to have a company registration certificate and a VAT certificate to even register as a seller.

Make In India, my foot! Decided to sell on amazon.com.

I'm very idealistic too. After reading all the replies on our website, I'm depressed and shattered. I don't think I can ever get myself to bribe someone. Don't have any connections too(even if I did, I don't think I would be very comfortable using them!). Feeling helpless at the moment- it shouldn't be this difficult to start a business, should it?
Don't pay bribes! Senior Department Officials Rashid Naushad - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
79 Prashant 203.122.16.122 Not Easy to Do Business Education Delhi Noida 2/5 1/5 1/5 1/5 Register the business Other Customers People are unwilling to pay. Period. You can deal with all the bureaucracy, but what can you do if people just don't want to pay? Ad based model is not feasible for every product.

Till now, I have mostly focused on the Indian market. I still think there is a huge opportunity. For example, consider admission process in educational institutes, their examination processes etc. Most of them are still manual and quite cumbersome. But like I said, to convince them to pay is quite a challenge.
Costumers won't pay for your product, no matter how novel your idea. Even in a supposedly "free" market like ours, there is a lot of red tape. Keep it Anonymous Anonymous - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
80 Prashant 203.122.16.122 Easy to Do Business Marketing Andhra Pradesh Hyderabad 3/5 3/5 1/5 3/5 Register the business I own a digital marketing agency and run a small cafe in Hyderabad. We offer premium web services, branding, content creation (including promo videos, blogs, etc) and PPC management for e-commerce clients and product companies who want a premium look and feel. This is my primary business.

Starting the business wasn't an issue at all. Andhra Pradesh is very conducive when it comes to start-ups, so I didn't have too much of an issue, though I did hire a CA to look after the process. Overall, didn't really have any problems.
Keep all your documents in order, right from the time you think about starting a business- address proofs, credit records, etc. Keep it Anonymous Anonymous - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
81 Prashant 203.122.16.122 Not Easy to Do Business E-Commerce Haryana Panchkula 2/5 3/5 1/5 2/5 Register the business
Trade outside state/ country
Other Sustaining the business The one we're starting now is an e-commerce business for a niche consumer good. We want to share things about everything about the business; starting from how we decided on the product and the business model, about marketing and gaining initial traction. We're trying to figure out social media, even though we both are kind of shy on the social networks.

We might have a lot of resources on startups from the US and other countries. But a fact of the matter is that starting something in India (as we've learned) is a different beast. We need to start discussing things in the open so that we can learn from each other.
Plan well. Starting a business isn't the tough bit, sustaining it is. Keep it Anonymous Anonymous - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
82 Prashant 203.122.16.122 Not Easy to Do Business IT Delhi New Delhi 3/5 2/5 1/5 2/5 Register the business
Trade outside state/ country
Can’t find information I started an IT firm, but it fizzled out within two months. I shortly left the country, and am currently working in San Francisco. Here are the reasons why it didn't work out, and probably never will:

1) Over-demanding yet non-competent talent pool. Bad work ethics. So many graduates, but none employable. In contrast, in Phillipines, you have technically qualified people with no degrees who have tons of freelance work to show as their experience.

2) One employee stole our circuit designs and disappears. Another faked his qualifications. Another got run over while transporting one of our items, we gave compensation to his family but couldn't find the culprit. Installed cameras in trucks where between each state- the police ended up demanding something from truckers!

3) Accounting is really confusing and messy. Border between legal and illegal is very very thin. One of my over enthusiastic employee bribed the customs official and later asked for compensation from the company - imagine what kind of accounting magics you can employ to cover it up among extremely ambiguous and contradictory laws ? Most accountants are part time money launderers. If you are an honest soul, this country isn't for you- sorry, no other way to put it!

4) We imported materials. Customs took items worth double digit lakhs as hostage for stupid reasons. Not much problems in Phillipines or Indonesia. Don't even want to begin talking about the pain we had to go through to export stuff!

5) Clients (read: Scammers) who don't pay, drying up our cash flow. Our clients were renowned businesses in India.

6) Suppliers who take money upfront and don't deliver (read: scammers 2.0). Also renowned businesses in India.

7) Government tenders - bribes, very short notice, unrealistic conditions, money hold up. They expect us to maintain their servers when they don't even have electricity, and blame us for the results of this power outage despite giving recommendations to buy a backup generator. When will babus know the difference between IT and power companies ?

9) Insurance guys who had weird clauses only found in this country. Never trust them - this includes government insurance companies who expect something for validating claims

10) Regulations, Licenses, Permits, Certificates (read: babudom and bribery). Documentation and paperwork is cumbersome and demotivating.

11) Venture Capitalists don't have much funds (compared to Singapore or Canada), inexperienced and hate anything about hardware or technology based businesses (probably they are aware of how risky it was to start in India) - will only prefer e-commerce intermediaries and IIT mafias. The amounts they are willing to invest was less than what I saved working for 3 months in the West.
Move elsewhere, India isn't the place to do business. Keep it Anonymous Anonymous - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
85 Prashant 203.122.16.122 Easy to Do Business Transport Himachal Pradesh Shimla 2/5 2/5 3/5 3/5 Register the business
Pay taxes
I have a transport company of my own, and has been successfully running for nearly two years now.

The setting-up took a bit of time, especially since the Himachal Pradesh police is a little prudent about your permits and such documents. But once I got it, it was a smooth sailing.

I would say having someone who has the knowledge of the field is necessary and important- it helps to have someone who has established their business in the field. In my case, I had an uncle in the same transport business, so that helped me out immensely.
Before starting a business, make sure to have a chat with someone who has already established themselves in the industry. They will tell you the potential dangers involved in setting up your business, and aid you if you need anything. Keep it Anonymous Anonymous - abcd@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Yes
6 Anonymous (not verified) 137.59.63.182 Easy to Do Business Construction Uttar Pradesh U.P. 3/5 5/5 4/5 4/5 Register the business My experience was pretty much a good and an easy experience since I took expert advice to register my business. Always take expert advice in the particular state you want to start and register your business because different states have different rules.
Local advocates know the best way out and they will be able to help you.
Keep it Anonymous Anonymous 9810053311 aanna.associates@gmail.com I have read and I agree with the Privacy Policy mentioned below Keep me updated about responses to my report and experience. Yes