Failure is my bitch

Incorporating a company in India

nischalshetty — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:30:00 +0530

We decided it was time to incorporate a private limited company as we’re growing, are a team of 3 full time employees, 1 full-time consultant and another part-time consultant. I had no clue incorporating would be this easy. I did not have to go anywhere, everything was done by the guys at NovoJuris. All I had to do was scan a few documents. The entire process took around 30 to 45 days (there was some delay in getting the company name approved but it’s expected when you’re dealing with the government).

From what I remember, these are the things you need to do while registering a company in India:

Documents needed for incorporation:

You need a PAN card
Proof of address (rented apartment works!)
Company address (rented apartment works!)
Passport size photos

You would then need to decide what the paid up capital and authorized capital would be (the guys at NovoJuris explained it to me and helped me choose what fit right for us).

Once you have the documents in place, it’s all about filling up a few forms, scanning and sending them across. It does not matter in which part of the country you are, or even if you aren’t in the country. If you have the necessary documents, everything can be done online.

Need to decide when is the right time to incorporate? Check my answer on Quora.

Next steps after incorporating:

Get a PAN for your company (you would need this for opening your company’s bank account)
Get a TAN for your company (needed for deducting and collecting tax)

While in the middle of incorporating our company I ended up discovering VakilSearch.com They offer legal services to startups. I got our Privacy Policy and TOS made using their service. The best thing about them is that they take proper care to understand your requirements before proceeding. The website also clearly displays the costs involved upfront so there are no surprises later.

Update 18/02/2012: Once you are done incorporating the company, get rubber stamps with your company name and letter head and I would also recommend getting business cards printed. I hate business cards but when people ask for it, it’s a little odd to tell them I don’t have one. Looking around for some minimal business card designs now.

Hi .. thanks for the helpful post on Chilean visa process. was super confused about the Police Clearance Certificate. You mention that you regretted buying a one way ticket, as opposed to a return ticket to Chile. Did the program pay for your ticket back? I would like to buy a one way ticket too because I don't want to deal with changing dates etc upon my return.

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:06:54 +0530

Yeah, they reimburse the ticket back home as well but we had exhausted our money to claim it. If you have money left then you can always claim it. But for a team of 2, $2k * 2 = $4k in one way tickets, you can always use that money on your startup. Changing dates is not a big deal in fact booking the ticket back is even more difficult… so book a return ticket

So, you have incorporated your company, printed business cards, got the swags made, decided what...

nischalshetty — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 08:29:06 +0530

So, you have incorporated your company, printed business cards, got the swags made, decided what your title at your company would be, read articles that teach you how to name your company, read everything about how investors can con you, bought domain names, bought the “.org” “.net” and everything else, thought how you would venture into new verticals once this product is a success.

Now go and do some real work, build a product.

While the majority is busy calling itself “entrepreneur”, “ceo”,...

nischalshetty — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:38:50 +0530

While the majority is busy calling itself “entrepreneur”, “ceo”, “founder” and “chairman”, a few work towards building valuable companies.

First day at a driving class today. Hope to learn soon, looking forward to being able to drive my...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:49:26 +0530

First day at a driving class today. Hope to learn soon, looking forward to
being able to drive my new car.

Booked a Hyundai i20. Would be getting the car tomorrow, yay!

nischalshetty — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:16:16 +0530

Booked a Hyundai i20. Would be getting the car tomorrow, yay!

Problem with "How we got..." articles

nischalshetty — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:09:00 +0530

The problem with articles like “how we got our first 10,000 users” or “How we made our first $10,000” is that they only work for the ones who wrote the article. You are different and you would need to do something different to achieve that. Read such articles to understand the process, but do not copy it. Build your own “How we got…”

Start-Up Chile - things you need to know to obtain a visa to Chile

nischalshetty — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:31:00 +0530

I’m part of the first batch of Start-Up Chile 2011. We are working on Buffr.com . The process to obtain a visa to Chile involves a few documents that you need to obtain in India and I thought it would be best to provide some info here.

If you’ve been selected into the Start-Up Chile program then the next step is to reach Chile. If you are in India these are the set of documents that you need before you get your visa to Chile.

Medical Certificate

This can be obtained from any general physician. All you need is a letter from the physician saying you are in good health.

HIV (AIDS) Test

Get your HIV (AIDS) test done at the local pathology lab, you should get the report within 2 days.

Police Certificate

This is where most of the confusion arises. You can obtain the Police Certificate (I think it’s called PCC, not sure) from either the local police station or from the regional passport office. If you go to the police station it usually would take around 2 weeks. At the regional passport office they give it within a week and if you request a little they might even give it within a couple of days. So your best bet is to first go to the regional passport office and apply for the Police Certificate there. You would need to carry proof of residence.

If there are any more documents required please obtain the same, these are the important ones that I can remember and the Police Certificate is the one that is a pain in the ass. The rest of the documents are easy to obtain.

Start-Up Chile folks would send you a code that helps you schedule an interview with the Chilean embassy in New Delhi. We got our visa within a couple of days but I would suggest you keep a weeks time in your head after you have obtained all the documents.

Once you have obtained your visa, it would be time to book your tickets. There are no direct flights to Chile from India hence you would be going with stop overs (there will be a minimum of 2 stop overs in any route).

Please remember, you need to check if any of the countries that you would be stopping over at require a Transit Visa. If they do, the best thing to do is choose a different route, one that does not require a Transit Visa.

We initially booked

Mumbai -> London -> Sao Paulo -> Santiago(Chile)

But later realized that London requires Indians to obtain a Transit Visa. Obtaining a Transit visa is almost the same as obtaining a tourist visa and if you do not have enough time on your hands it’s best not to go through such routes.

We finally booked

Mumbai -> Qatar -> Sao Paulo -> Santiago

None of these require a transit visa. There are a couple of other routes that do not require a transite visa for indians :

India -> Netherlands -> Lima -> Santiago
India -> Turkey -> Sao Paulo -> Santiago

I think there’s another route through Johannesburg that does not require a transit visa but I’m not too sure about it.

While booking the tickets, you have 2 options, either a one way ticket or a return. I did a mistake and booked one way since I wasn’t sure when I would want to return from Chile. But that was a mistake. Not because I do not like it here, it’s a beautiful country with wonderful people. But the tickets back home now cost me several times more! To give you context, I was getting return tickets for around US$2000 But I booked one way for around $1600. And the tickets from Santiago to India costs around $2200. Which means had I booked return tickets it would have cost me $2k but because of one way I’ve ended up paying $3.8k

This seems like a long post! If you have any questions please let me know, I’ll be glad to help.

Update: You can check if a transit visa is required on this site.

How to create a decent screencast of your website

nischalshetty — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:30:00 +0530

It’s always good to have a screencast displaying the most important features of your website. I looked around to find websites or people who would make a screencast but nothing seemed to suit my budget. I realized getting a screencast can be expensive. Whenever I realize that, I do one of the two things. I either forget about the idea or I try to do it on my own. Since this was important for us I chose the latter.

This is how I went about creating a screencast of Buffr :

I used Jing (Pro) to capture a video of buffr displaying what I thought were important features that users would like
I then downloaded Camtasia and edited the video. Editing involved chopping off a few sections which I thought were not needed. I also zoomed in on features so that users did not need to go full screen to see the screencast
I needed music that was legal and royalty free so I bought one from PremiumBeat

It took me around half a day to get it right. This was my first attempt and I’m a little more confident that the next screencast that I try would be better than this. It’s a start.

This is the screencast.

Update: My second attempt after we revamped the Buffr UI

Sunday: Indian lunch at Salaam Bombay

nischalshetty — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 01:42:52 +0530

There’s an Indian fine dining restaurant near our place. We finally visited it today. I like the name - “Salaam Bombay”. It’s run by a guy from Madras and he said they serve only North Indian food.

So, in Chile we had North Indian food in a restaurant named Salaam Bombay being served by a South Indian!

The next time I go there I’m gonna take some pics and put them here! The food was expensive (there are very few Indian restaurants here in Chile and they are expensive, they ought to be because the ingredients needed are rare and expensive as well).

I loved “rogan josh”(mutton) and the “jeera rice” here.

Damage (in chilean peso) - 22000 + 2000(tip) divide by 3 people = 8000 peso each.

Chilean lunch at a friend's place

nischalshetty — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:31:00 +0530

I was invited for a chilean lunch at a friend’s place. Chilean cuisine is usually bland (at least by Indian standards) but she was sweet enough to make some spicy salad for us. I’m not really a salad person but I just loved this one!

For the first time in my life, I actually ate an oyster, raw!!! All you do is squeeze lemon on top of it and eat it. I felt exactly the same as the author of this post did!

Chile until now

nischalshetty — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:12:00 +0530

It’s been almost 2 months since I landed here in Chile. When I was leaving India, I thought I would blog everyday but I haven’t been able to, I failed in doing that.

It’s been a good 2 months here. The people here are extremely friendly. No one knows english hence it can be a bit overwhelming at the beginning. But over time you get adjusted to the new language and though you wouldn’t learn Spanish overnight, you gain enough confidence to get around the city.

I like the metro here as well as the cabs though the cabs are a bit too expensive but they are convenient if you are a group of 3 or 4. I’ve made some new friends here but haven’t had the time to interact much with them since buffr.com has been keeping me busy.

I hope to blog more about Chile, about the program Start-Up Chile and about everything else I experience while I am here working, enjoying, meeting new people and trying to build an easy way to manage social media accounts.

"I believe in need based entrepreneurship. Build a product you need, one that you would want to use."

nischalshetty — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 07:07:28 +0530

“I believe in need based entrepreneurship. Build a product you need, one that you would want to use.”

- Nischal

I would have never built twitter

nischalshetty — Tue, 03 May 2011 23:34:27 +0530

I get excited whenever a new idea enters my head. A day or two I’m all happy, thinking how smart I am to come up with something like that. And then, it all comes crashing down when I tell myself that this idea is too trivial, I’m never going to make a big “company” out of this little idea.

Stop thinking like that! Your core problem lies in not understanding that building a billion dollar company is just that, a one in a billion thing.

So what do you do?

Simple, do what is humanly possible. Plan and execute an idea such that you can start earning a few hundred dollars. Let the first money come in. Let people see what little things you are capable of. It does not matter how trivial what you have built is, what’s important is that it has the “made by me” tag.

Little $100 ideas will eventually give rise to a million dollar idea. Stop at the very first idea you have in your mind. Execute it. How difficult is that? Why haven’t you done it till now?

I will be reading this whenever I’m depressed that my idea does not seem to be a billion dollar idea. And I have to remind myself, if the idea of twitter had occurred to me first, I would have simply let it pass because it does not seem to be a billion dollar idea!

The Office

nischalshetty — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:15:22 +0530

The Office

Video

nischalshetty — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:28:27 +0530

Day 1 working at home. Hope to get an office space soon.

nischalshetty — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:22:48 +0530

Day 1 working at home. Hope to get an office space soon.

"When you’re not happy being happy, get married."

nischalshetty — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 11:09:13 +0530

“When you’re not happy being happy, get married.”

- Nischal

What happens at work after you quit

nischalshetty — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 12:20:26 +0530

Things shouldn’t change once it’s apparent that you are going to quit a company. Your behavior towards work shouldn’t change and neither should your company’s behavior towards you change.

But, most of the time this isn’t the case. Employees tend to put on a lethargic attitude towards their work while employers start treating them as a step child. Then each starts blaming the other. It’s a vicious circle and my suggestion, whether you are an employer or an employee would be to not change your attitude towards the other.

All that you’ve put in, everything that you’ve built, all the credibility and all the love can suddenly disappear during the last few days in office. It’s so simple, why screw up all these years of hard work! Unfortunately, neither the employers nor the employees seem to get this thing.

It’s time you started doing something different from the rest. Employers be happy about someone quitting (now you get an opportunity to recruit some fresh blood into the company) and employees should hang on, keeping in mind not to screw up when your stint at a company is nearing an end.

I’m serving my notice period right now and I’m just glad things haven’t changed for me. I still love my workplace and I’m having fun at my last few days in office.

Good things happen to good people.

"I’m happy being me!"

nischalshetty — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 10:49:59 +0530

“I’m happy being me!”

- Nischal Shetty