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Nearly a third of Indian startup founders surveyed are considering moving abroad

tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com

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Re: Nearly a third of Indian startup founders surveyed are considering moving abroad

#31

Post by kranner »

lonelappde wrote: post #30
kranner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://inc42.com/features/the-curse-of-angel-tax-travelkhan... In addition to incidents like these, corruption is widespread in India. Exports qualify for GST exemption or refund, but in practice refunds are hard to get (at least without a 5% or more bribe).

5% of how much, though? how much more than 5%?

5% (up to 15%) of the amount to be refunded, which for exporters is all of their GST, which can be up to 28% of the gross value of goods sold.

Just a twitter search for "GST refund bribe" will show a lot of examples.

Re: Nearly a third of Indian startup founders surveyed are considering moving abroad

#32

Post by hexagone »

twerwe23423 wrote: post #12
kranner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://inc42.com/features/the-curse-of-angel-tax-travelkhan... In addition to incidents like these, corruption is widespread in India. Exports qualify for GST exemption or refund, but in practice refunds are hard to get (at least without a 5% or more bribe).

Scary. Tells you about what a state drunk on its power can do; no wonder India is so big on 'digital transactions' (pushed, interestingly, by the likes of USAID).

Unnecessarily political comment. That too when the Angel Tax, started by the previous government in 2012 (to curb money laundering) (source: https://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/finance/et-in-the-c...), and was ended by this government in 2019 (source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/23/india-angel-tax/).

Re: Nearly a third of Indian startup founders surveyed are considering moving abroad

#34

Post by kranner »

hexagone wrote: post #32
twerwe23423 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scary. Tells you about what a state drunk on its power can do; no wonder India is so big on 'digital transactions' (pushed, interestingly, by the likes of USAID).

Unnecessarily political comment. That too when the Angel Tax, started by the previous government in 2012 (to curb money laundering) (source: https://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/finance/et-in-the-c... ), and was ended by this government in 2019 (source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/23/india-angel-tax/ ).

Angel Tax was not 'ended'. There are still many conditions under which it is still applicable, governing both who can invest in a startup and how the startup can spend its money. [1]

A bigger issue which is still applicable today is that long term capital gains tax on startups and other unlisted companies is still 28.5%, while for listed stocks it is 10%. [2]

There are some exemptions announced today for foreign investments until 2024 with a lock-in period of 3 years. [3]

[1] https://yourstory.com/2019/08/angel-tax-startups-angel-inves...

[2] https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/higher-l...

[3] https://www.livemint.com/budget/news/budget-2020-full-text-o...

Re: Nearly a third of Indian startup founders surveyed are considering moving abroad

#35

Post by hinkley »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #20
throwaway1997 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's only because they are cheap

Thats exactly what people said of China 15 years ago. Just a bunch of factories good for cheap knockoffs, not a place for high quality stuff. Now they have Tencent, Baidu, Huawei etc and a #2 spot in the global economy.

As someone put it: manufacturing is a ladder.

They also said the same of South Korea (LG, Samsung) and before that, Japan (Sharp, Sony) and Taiwan.

Re: Nearly a third of Indian startup founders surveyed are considering moving abroad

#37

Post by throwaway1997 »

thecleaner wrote: post #26
throwaway1997 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be a large economy, in part because there are 1.3bn inhabitants, but my point is that people consume services provided by Indian companies largely because they are cheap.

This does not seem true. Indian service sector is very good at its job barring a few bad apples. For example, FinTech industry has done a remarkable job of easing payments. Compare that to Germany where the service sector is just awful. Of course, German competency in manufacturing is far ahead of India right now. It would be great to see both countries fixing up their weak areas in the future.

That may be true but Indian fintech is for domestic use and we are talking about exported services.

Re: Nearly a third of Indian startup founders surveyed are considering moving abroad

#38

Post by tim333 »

naveensky wrote: post #23
alecco wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about finding workers and payroll costs?

All major costs (payroll, devs, marketing etc.) are in India. The only cost is accounting/compliance which is again it seems is lesser compared to India. We need to file taxes in India for operations done in India, yeah so that actually means that we are increasing the overhead of compliance (adding Singapore compliance). Benefits are better funding opportunities, lesser taxation and financial tools to work for your…

It sounds more like your company having an offshore shell company in a tax haven rather than actually moving. These things can work well for sales outside your home country - most multinationals do something like that.

Re: Nearly a third of Indian startup founders surveyed are considering moving abroad

#39

Post by polishdude20 »

hinkley wrote: post #35
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats exactly what people said of China 15 years ago. Just a bunch of factories good for cheap knockoffs, not a place for high quality stuff. Now they have Tencent, Baidu, Huawei etc and a #2 spot in the global economy.

As someone put it: manufacturing is a ladder. They also said the same of South Korea (LG, Samsung) and before that, Japan (Sharp, Sony) and Taiwan.

Can you explain further? What does it mean for it to be a ladder?

Re: Nearly a third of Indian startup founders surveyed are considering moving abroad

#40

Post by hinkley »

polishdude20 wrote: post #39
hinkley wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone put it: manufacturing is a ladder. They also said the same of South Korea (LG, Samsung) and before that, Japan (Sharp, Sony) and Taiwan.

Can you explain further? What does it mean for it to be a ladder?

This is all my own interpretation, but it’s a bootstrapping problem. Feynman complained about a consulting gig he took to try to bootstrap STEM programs in South America. You need mentors to make more mentors. If you can’t send people off to train or coax people in, you’re left with whoever can intuit things on their own and explain them to others. That pair of skills is exceptionally rare.

If you are the first factory in an area, nobody knows what to do. So you make simple stuff with high tolerances as you build a base of skilled labor. and a customer base.

Then you ratchet up, and ratchet up, and get nicer customers and more cash and contacts and make products that require more and more sophisticated processes.

If you’re lucky, you make middle to high end stuff that few other people can before the exchange rate completely fucks you vs the next up and comer.

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