About Me

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Mumbai, India
I run an IT Security consulting firm based out of India. We started off from scratch in 2001 when I was 21, and have offices in Mumbai, Bahrain, and UAE. The idea behind the blog is to share the stories of how we run the business, the deals we make, the deals that break, the heartburn, and the sheer joy.

The Ultimate Startup Guide

The Ultimate Startup Guide is an e-book that provides answers to all your questions related to starting and growing a business in India. Everything you wanted to know about entrepreneurship in India from ideation to registration to marketing to hiring. The book contains a large number of practical examples, anecdotes, interviews, and motivational material to help you get started, and to grow rapidly in a booming Indian economy. If you've got the idea, this book will help you through with the execution and realize your dreams. Here are some of the key questions you will find answered in this book:
  • When starting a business, what are the legal issues involved?
  • What form of incorporation is better suited to which type of business?
  • What tax issues are involved?
  • How do I start a business and what are the pitfalls?
  • How do I market my business in the absence of significant funding?
  • How do I get funded?
  • What are the basic accounting concepts I should be aware of?
  • What is a business plan and how should I build one?
The brief table of contents of the book is as follows:
  1. Getting started
  2. Ideation
  3. Forms of Enterprises
  4. Funding
  5. Basic Accounting and Taxation
  6. Import and Export Licensing
  7. Trademark and Patenting
  8. Rules for NRIs and Foreigners
  9. Building a Business Plan
  10. Marketing on a Shoestring
  11. Website and Branding
  12. Women Entrepreneurs
  13. Templates
To order the Ultimate Startup Guide - email me at kkmookhey@gmail.com.

Details of the book are:
Title: The Ultimate Startup Guide
Author: Kanwal Mookhey
Pages: 150
Additional: Companion CD contains numerous templates for building your business plan, calculating cashflow, preparing profit and loss, and balance sheets, preparing invoices, your resume and profile, marketing material, websites, contracts, and many other useful and motivational material.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

The Government sucks - literally!

Note: Rant follows

Some clarifications - I am not an anarchist (not yet anyway), and not even a pro-laissez faire libertarian. But sometimes, the government just screws your entire day. This is how.

I thought we had all our tax liabilities figured out (Income tax, Service Tax, VAT, Professional Tax, Tax Deducted at Source, etc.), when in walks a lady "inspector" from the "Maharashtra Labour Welfare Board", and asks us how many employees we have. Based on this information, she shows us the Mumbai Labour Welfare Fund Act, 1953 according to which we are supposed to pay them on a per employee per month basis every 6 months! Argh!

Apparently, here are the rules:
If a company has more than five employees then that company is liable to pay for Labour Welfare fund twice in a year (i.e in June & December).

The rate slabs are as follows:
Salary below Rs. 3000/- (employee's contribution is Rs. 6/- & employer's contribution is Rs. 18/- for six month)
Salary above Rs. 3000/- (employee's contribution is Rs. 12/- & employer's contribution is Rs. 36/- for six month)

A bit of Googling shows http://www.on-lyne.info/legal6.htm, which gives slightly different rates than what the lady prescribed.

Based on her calculations, and with 16 employees she has given us a claim letter which says that we have to now pay Rs. 3,360/- in first week of July. Well, agreed, it's a piddling little amount, but it's just an irritating impediment to getting on with work.


I mean, if you look at all the taxes we end up paying, let's say we get paid Rs. 100, here is how the cookie crumbles:

  • Rs. 5.25 is deducted by the client as Tax Deducted at Source (TDS)
  • Rs. 12.24 goes as Service Tax and educational cess
  • Rs. 15.75 from the gross profit on the Rs. 100 goes as income tax - paid every quarter for that quarter. This is calculated as follows. We assume a gross profit of 45% on the total receipts for that quarter, and apply a tax rate of 35% on that. Which comes to 35% on Rs. 45 for the Rs. 100 earned.
  • Rs. 200 per employee per month goes as Professional Tax. Amortize that over our earnings
  • For every employee, their tax component is to be paid for by the company, or we are liable for penalties
It's not that we don't pay our taxes on time or evade them. It is also not the case that starting one's own business in India is difficult - we were up and running relatively quickly. But just when you think you've got it all figured out, in traipses an inspector and squeezes a few more thousands out of you. Sheesh!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your blog is no longer anonymous with the picture:) u might be harming your company by discussing ur internal details in open:)- PA

Kanwal K Mookhey said...

Yup, you're right. Put it down to laziness I guess. Have sanitized it now. :)

Anonymous said...

being nit picky here but the previous picture is still available by modifying the url:)

Kanwal K Mookhey said...

Hmm..this is quite interesting. How do you get rid of the earlier picture, now?