Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

superr.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 456 posts

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#141

Post by kumarvvr »

I am not sure about a manufacturing company, but I could start a "firm", in a matter of 1 week, to conduct business. Granted mine is a software development one and I created the business primarily for tax purposes.

Looks like the author wants to use land demarcated for agricultural use to build a factory.

That is a whole new story. In many cities, there are industrial development centers and you can buy land there and build a manufacturing facility easily.(The very fact that the govt. sold/leased you land in that zone means a lot of environmental and industrial clearances are de-facto fulfilled)

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#143

Post by kragen »

Vespasian wrote: post #11
giva wrote: post #6

> Yes, you need to obtain “permission” before you build any manufacturing structure on your own land with your own money. This permission is called the NA or Non-Agricultural Certificate. Well, I though it was this way everywhere in the world. In Europe, at least, you cannot build anything on agricultural land unless it is a n agricultural structure or you get the classification changed, which is not easy.

The idea itself is sound and reasonable. If you let people built wherever you'll find yourself out of arable land in an instant. What seems overly complex and inefficient is the amount of permissions and the subpermissions. Even to my German bueorcracy adjusted ears this sounds like a great way to extract bribes and fees. At least the process here is quite clear (but not always fast)

This does not seem sound and reasonable. Yes, India has been civilized for 5000 years, with the result that it's very densely populated; but "very densely populated" is only 418 people per square kilometer, less than twice Germany's 232.

53% of India's land area is arable land: 790 people per square kilometer of arable land, or 1270 square meters of arable land per person. I feel like 100 square meters of factory area per person is more than adequate, which would decrease the arable land by some 8% if you built it all on previously cultivated fields, rather than mountains or forests or deserts (or polders!); but that assumes you're employing the entire population in the factories.

Some factories do have lower density than that; for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI was 370 acres (150 hectares in modern units) and employed 5500 people at its closure in 02006. This works out to 270 square meters per worker. But now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Fremont_Factory occupies that space and some additional (175 hectares total) and employs 22000 people, 80 square meters per person, despite extensive automation.

If some of those factories are producing fertilizers, tractors, irrigation equipment, and food products, converting some fields into factories might actually increase your agricultural production rather than decreasing it. Germany harvests 7 tonnes of cereals per hectare that's planted in cereals; India, despite being tropical, harvests only 3.3: https://tradingeconomics.com/india/cereal-yield-kg-per-hecta...

Allocating scarce resources like land by means of capitalism is maybe not ideal unless you can make more of them (polders!), but it does seem to work better than allocating them by bureaucracy and laws.

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#144

Post by kumarvvr »

egorfine wrote: post #69
agileAlligator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like the problem is that the author has a moral objection to paying bribes Duh?

Exactly. This is what the rest of the world usually says on the first encounter with "tips culture" in the US. As I see it, cultures are different and one thing that is considered an absolute taboo in one culture might be customary in another. Tips in the US are customary yet at the same time they are offensive in Japan. Bribes are killing the economy in my country yet it makes economy moving in India. PS: I personal…

First time I am hearing about this. Could you elaborate on the Tips culture in US?

Do you have any first hand or second hand experience with it?

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#145

Post by kumarvvr »

akhilramolla wrote: post #129

Try the signle window policy of Telangana. https://ipass.telangana.gov.in/about.aspx

I am from Hyderabad. Can you share any success stories with this? I am very interested. Do you have any first hand knowledge or experience with this system?

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#146

Post by pjc50 »

pjmlp wrote: post #92
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries with high paperwork and bureaucratic burden are famous for also being highly corrupt. This is probably not a coincidence. Likely all the excess paperwork makes it easier to hide what's really going on, easy to provide roadblocks for those who don't pay, and easier to generally hide bad activity in a sea of noise.

I wouldn't consider Germany and Switzerland that corrupt.

They aren't, but there's definitely some present at the top. With enough money on the table, how could it be otherwise? Others have mentioned gas, but there's also BaFin/Wirecard: https://newrepublic.com/article/162084/weird-extremely-germa...

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#147

Post by vwcx »

19h wrote: post #134
m12k wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the meantime companies like remote.com and similar have sprung up, providing "employer of record" services. Basically they let you outsource the act of having a company in a given country and employing people through it, much like how Stripe lets you outsource the whole merchant account thing for payments. It seems that whenever there's red tape, there's a business opportunity in paving over it and providing a san…

I would like to second this recommendation. We’ve been using remote.com and hiring internationally suddenly became very possible and we can’t be any more happy. Before this hiring internationally was a pure nightmare to the point that we simply didn’t accept international remote developers. Thanks Remote!

And how has that shell set-up been for your international team members?

In my experience, it added just enough of a layer of obscuration to perpetuate a caste system, similar to how full time temps and vendors are currently treated in tech. US FTE employees had full HR support while Indian subcontractors had really poor HR/payroll/benefits resources from Remote. YMMV

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#148

Post by kumarvvr »

rohan_shah wrote: post #15
anovikov wrote: post #4

If building something on agricultural land is hard, it is good: it is called agricultural for a reason. Maybe buying a parcel of industrial or commercial land would have ended up cheaper?

Author of the article here: All the land in India is agricultural by default. Except in some desert states.

Really? Lots of land parcels are identified as Non-agricultural.

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#149

Post by rish1_2 »

The right answer to most of this corruption is to create a system of check and balances with complete blinded information exchange between each check point so no one decision body is influenced by another. This is impossible to create because of vested interests and likely never happen.

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#150

Post by pjc50 »

kumarvvr wrote: post #144
egorfine wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This is what the rest of the world usually says on the first encounter with "tips culture" in the US. As I see it, cultures are different and one thing that is considered an absolute taboo in one culture might be customary in another. Tips in the US are customary yet at the same time they are offensive in Japan. Bribes are killing the economy in my country yet it makes economy moving in India. PS: I personal…

First time I am hearing about this. Could you elaborate on the Tips culture in US? Do you have any first hand or second hand experience with it?

US waitstaff aren't covered by minimum wage laws - effectively a very large component of their income is "variable compensation" through tips. This is "expected" to be 10-20%. The culture doesn't quite come out and say "you need to put down 10% more than the number stated on your bill in order for the person serving you to make rent", but if you don't it will be interpreted as an insult.
Post reply on HN