Start IT up

During the year and a half of TechJini’s existence, we have learnt several things about starting and running a company in Bangalore. I am putting together our experiences in this post so that it can be helpful to others.

Register the company

The World Bank has a very detailed and comprehensive list of things to be done when you want to start your company. It covers most of the statutory requirements of starting a company in Bangalore. Many of these services are available online, so it makes life simpler. For those that are not available online, it is advisable to go through a Chartered Accountant.

It is advisable to get your company registered before you commence operations. Else it can create problems when you receive payments and don’t yet have a bank account in the company’s name.

Open a bank account

We chose citibank as our company bankers after we spoke to several banks. They offered better personalized service, were easily accessible and had the necessary features we were looking for. Since current account have no interest, choose a bank that offers easy ways to park/withdraw your surplus funds into/from short term funds which are mostly risk free and earn a good interest rate of 6% p.a.

Accounting and statutory compliance

Since Tally is the most commonly used accounting software, I would recommend to buy a license and start using it from the beginning. This avoids any accounting nightmares when you try to create your balance sheets at the eleventh hour. If you are not from an accounting background, it is best to hire a part-time accountant who can visit your premises and update your accounts every week or every fortnight. You can find such a person by locating any Tally coaching institute in your locality. They charge anywhere between Rs 1500 to Rs 3000 based on the amount of work.

There are several statutory and back office requirements like payroll, filing PT returns, advance tax, TDS returns, ROC returns, VAT/CST returns etc that require knowledge, time and effort. I did this myself the first year, but found that it is better to hire a professional for these while I can focus on our core business. Thus we met few CAs and finally contracted one of them. For a monthly fee, they handle all things including accounting, payroll, TDS, ROC, IT , PT etc (except the audit). They charge upwards of Rs 10,000 per month based on the number of employees.

Liability of employee behaviour
Another aspect to remember is that the company should formulate and get every employee (including the founders) tosign a Term of Employment or Company Policy documents. These documents outline several things including (but not limited to)

• employee’s acceptable behavior
• state that if the employee indulges in any unlawfully activity, the company shall not be liable
• the employee shall not use any IP from this company or anywhere else unless authorized

This becomes even more critical for IT startups since cyber laws are still evolving and these documents go a long way in proving that the employer takes preventive measures to protect the law. You can contact any lawyer who specializes in Cyber Law and he can assist you with the drafting of a policy.

Premises and utilities

We chose an office that was close to both the founders’ residences. This greatly improves productivity since we do not waste time and energy commuting to the workplace. Since we are a startup, we chose an office that offered us the best value for the money. Also ensure that there are few eateries in vicinity. Make sure you verify other things like, water availability, parking space, capacity of electricity connection etc.

If you are an IT startup, get at least 2 internet connections. We have BSNL and Tata Indicom. We have had bad experience with both of them, but Airtel (which is the best in terms of uptime) is not available in our locality.

Resources

I am sharing the contacts/resources that may save you time. Feel free to let them know you heard about them from us.
Chartered Accountants

• Dilip Kumar (9341218974) - Apart from CA functions, provides accounting, payroll, statutory compliance services
• Krishnananda Nayak (26578391) - Also provides all CA and other services.
• L. Krishna Moorthy (26789535) - CA and tax consulting. We get our personal returns filed from him.
• Ashim Dey Bhowmick - Provides all functions of CA and also back office services

Lawyers

• Vipin Kumar Jain (9845050266)
• Sajan Poovayya of Poovayya & Co (41156800) http://www.poovayya.net

Please share any thing we missed via the comments.

With a few free days on hand and the ICC Cricket World Cup around the corner, we here at TechJini thought why not make use of the time and create something for the World Cup. Thus CheerMyTeam was born. The features were driven by two factors, 1. We are cricket fans and 2. We wanted to use some libraries/technologies. So after deciding the features, we spent about 4 days creating it. Here is what you can do on the site:

• Get a widget that you can place on your site/blog to show support for your country (See the widget in action below at the end of this post)
• Vote for and cheer your favourite team
• Vote for and cheer your favourite players
• View latest World Cup public photos from flickr and videos from youtube
• Take part in discussions
• View live score (thanks to vcricket)

Thats all we had time for although we wanted to do much much more. After all you cannot do much on a diet of beers and pizzas

The widget (for India) is below. You can get the widget for your country.

If you have any feedback/suggestions/brickbats about the site, please leave a comment.

As more and more companies bring out great products in the web 2.0 arena, it becomes evident that innovation is all around. Except here at home. I was looking at this cool mashup of Google Maps with the physical locations of all web 2.0 companies, and one hting to notice is that there is not a single company from India.

India has more than 50% of global market share for IT sourcing and more than 30% in the ITES sector. Give that fact it is indeed surprising and disappointing that there are very few innovations happening from India, and probably none in the web application area.

Leave a comment if you happen to know any web 2.0 startup from India.