Recurring Billing – demystified for SaaS companies Abstract For any SaaS Startup with India market focus, the biggest bottleneck today is recurring billing. It is not available as an open, over the counter service from payment gateways. Most startups have to work around to solve this problem. The workaround may be using an expensive international payment gateway or it may be incorporating...
Tax on Services procured from foreign service providers Startups and SMEs in a digital world use many services from across the world. Skype, Google ADwords and hosting services from foreign hosting providers are some examples. So also are the online services of consultants, designers, content writers and developers etc. There is a service tax required that apply on many such services. Many people...
Ease of doing business – Some new additions in Company Incorporation rules Ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) has announced the Companies (Incorporation) Third Amendment Rules,2016. The set of announcements made will replace or change the the Companies (Incorporation) Rules, 2014. There are about 12 changes announced in the notification published at MCA website here. However, the...
ESOP another Stay-in-India checklist item gets MCA nod Ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) has recently relaxed sweat equity issuance norms for startups. These new relaxations are for limited to Startups recognized by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). The announcement will immensely help startups. For startups not recognized under DIPP, there is not change. The new...
This write-up should be read along with the previous blog – The Value Added Service Providers in Cloud Telephony. These blogs help us to accumulate the progressive development in discourse on policy for this segment of Industry. It is important for our common understanding and help Software product industry innovating in telecom sector in general and cloud telephony in specific terms. The...
Industry discussion on response to Consultation Papers by TRAI on Voice Mail/Audiotex/Unified Messaging Services Licence TRAI floated a consultation paper to review the license of Voice Mail/Audiotex/Unified Messaging Services. The consultation paper throws light along with an in-depth analysis of various issues involved. Many call these companies as Cloud telephony companies. Cloud telephony is...
In this session we take up another announcement by ministry of corporate affairs on convertible notes. This is a step forward to solving the problem of receiving funds as loan from foreign investors as convertible notes. Sanjay Khan Nagra talks about the issue in the video embedded below. What is a convertible note? Convertible notes are debt instruments that converts in to equity, at a later...
In this session on Domestic venture debt, we talk about a recent announcement by Government of India, that relaxed the provision on raising debt from domestic non-banking sources of funds. Sanjay Khan speaks on the subject in below embedded video. What is the problem, that this new announcement on domestic venture debt solves? Private companies can raise debt funds in a restricted manner only...
In this session we take up a long pending issue of “Angel Tax”. It has been given partial reprieve recently, under StartupIndia plan. We also discuss how startups can raise money from Angels, without getting trapped in fair market value rule of finance act 2012. Sanjay Khan speaks on the problem, the latest announcement and the way out for startups to raise equity without DIPP route, in the below...
Over the past couple of days, a lot has been written/discussed about the so called ‘startup tax’ and its perceived ill effects on the startup ecosystem. Under iSPIRT’s new initiative, PolicyHacks, I attempt in this note to demystify the legal/tax jargon around this tax and to clarify the proposed rule for the benefit of ecosystem participants, particularly startups. What is the law? Simply put...
