Foreword
In today’s world, your business must compete on a much wider playing field, no longer confined within your national borders. The Indian economy has been on a growth trajectory over the last decade with rapid strides across new age industries like Information Technology, IT Enabled Services, Aerospace, Pharma to name a few. Today, India is the 3rd largest economy in the world by GDP PPP (Purchasing Power Parity), 7th largest country in the world by area and 2nd largest by population and there is ample reason for India’s viability as a destination for foreign investment. In addition to the above-mentioned macroeconomic indicators, higher disposable incomes, emerging middle class, low cost but competitive and skilled workforce, all contribute towards India being an appropriate choice for foreign companies in some of the areas mentioned previously.
Key Aspects Of Doing Business In India
India is the world’s largest democracy and the second-fastest growing major economy.
India offers political stability that is vital to your company’s investment. Here Government agencies, which have a pro-business attitude, work closely with the business sector to promote economic growth.
Your enterprise can leverage on India’s trade network with its regional and bilateral free trade agreements with many trading partners.
A significant investment in infrastructure is taking place in India, particularly in the metropolitan areas, including New Delhi, our base. Coupled with this, India offers good living standards with a robust transport and communications system, superior healthcare facilities and first-class hospitality and entertainment infrastructure.
India offers a very competitive tax regime for your business and comprehensive network of Tax Treaties. Indian taxes have been further modified by the introduction of the Goods and Service Tax or the GST.
India offers a highly-rated human capital base recognized for its skills, knowledge and talent for undertaking your business operations efficiently by the best in the industry.
India’s financial system is well regulated and offers a broad range of services that may suit your business needs. Your enterprise can also tap into its developed capital markets as an alternative source of financing.
The legal and judicial system in India is robust and efficient, thus, your business can count on India’s rigorous enforcement of laws.
India has great work ethics and a very professional way of operating. Our employees are hard working and willing to work extendedly on holidays / weekends, if necessary, to further your business objectives for India.
Business Journey in India
Taking your company’s brand overseas can be appealing, and many companies would jump at the chance of entering into India. Between establishing a fresh customer base, learning new laws and regulations, finding trustworthy supply-chain networks, and becoming familiar with the local customs, the road to becoming a global company is difficult to navigate but not that difficult if the company has the ‘Right’ Local Business Partner. Before your Company decides to make the leap overseas in to India, you may need to consider certain factors.
Is Your Company Ready for International Expansion into India?
Most definitely one of the first questions a company must answer is whether its business is actually suited to succeed in an international market like India. Scaling across borders is complicated and expensive regardless of a company’s size, and the process can take time and resource away from your company’s other opportunities. Interested companies like yours would need to evaluate whether or not expansion is indeed beneficial, or if it will only take away from their core business especially in their home country and other existing foreign markets. After all, your company may be better-off serving one country well than several countries poorly.
Success Will Take Time – Factor Your International Growth Plans Accordingly
To plan ahead, your company will firstly need to investigate the markets and try to figure out if ‘data’ supports a move into the Indian markets, create more long-term business opportunities and actually build a strong customer base. Your company may need to take a look at your finances and honestly ask yourself if your company has the funds to support the initial investment in Business Development & Strategy Formulation and thereafter sustain the Operationalization Milestones they have estimated and if the answer to both is yes, then it may be the right time to invest-enter-grow in a foreign market like India. As an initial step your company may choose a ‘reliable’ and ‘relevant’ Representation Partner to conduct some significant research into the appropriate Indian Market segment, to explore and interview potential End Users, where your company wants to expand.
No major business decision is without its hurdles, but global expansion comes with its own unique set of challenges. Some of these challenges that companies like yours that are interested in foreign expansion / business development should prepare for before expanding internationally are discussed briefly below.
It is important to understand that there would be cultural and language differences in the target country and a diverse multi-cultural, multi-linguistic, vast country like India is no exception. It would auger well for foreign companies like yours to ‘source’ a local partner’s perspective to understand how the Indian culture and traditions could affect the prospective market for some consumer goods and services outside your home country.
Learning the different tax laws, business regulations and supply chain standards in the India can be certainly challenging wherein compliance can be one of the biggest challenge your company could face when expanding overseas in India and sometimes can take couple of months for completion of the necessary paperwork for compliance and in case your company decides to set up your own overseas office or corporation.
Your home country banks may also be hesitant to deal with the administrative burden of a foreign-based account, so your company may have to set up a separate foreign business entity and bank account to make handling transactions worthwhile for the banks in the target country i.e. India.
This is basic to break into the any country’s developing business sector and that applies to India as well. Starting the right kind of presence can make a difference between success and wasted efforts for which Foreign companies like yours would need Physical Presence through Indian Partners to gather information on points like, assessment of the total market, potential buyers and target market (segment), knowing about your competition, pricing & product mix, entry options, regulatory environment, choice of impactful business framework and strategy and finally, most importantly, how to go about implementing the India-specific business roadmap.
Whereas having a ‘Real’ or ‘Physical’ office with appropriate infrastructure is considered paramount for Foreign Business Operations, setting-up or creating such an office in the foreign target market like India could be a lengthy process which, given the strength of your product or service or growth mandates or investment availability, may not be tactically prudent. It is therefore critical for your company which wants to get on with the Managements’ Business Growth Objective, to seek out a qualified Business Partner in the target country, i.e. India, which has a proven track record in your line of Product and (or) Service.