Initial groundwork, plugging and plodding.

The legalization of ones business is fairly confusing. Though it is much easier and plain straight forward if you submit your mind and purse to a chartered accountant (the choice of height and weight being your personal inclination!!) but then you stay the same rookie you were 10 minutes ago, yes bubbling and frothing. I had the chance to meet up with some of the above mentioned to get a fair idea of how to start. Believe me, all you need is a rubber stamp with your exotic (and numerologically correct if I may add, but I would not leave so much to that though) name on it. You would need a bit of a strong heart too I guess. Numerous sites and webpages suggested the following
- get your company registered (I plan to run a proprietorship firm, recall?)
- get the service tax registration
- get the ESI and PF registration
- The shop and establishment sign off
- Get the labour law guys to give you the go ahead
- Get a current account
Well none of these are mandatory in the single person owned set up, except the last one (for your own good I guess). On the contrary, the registration of the firm and the likes of PF/ ESI and S&E only end up complicating the straight line of business you have in mind. This can also mire you in tedious and long legal hassles if you get into them. Over and above that, each of the certification costs precious money which you are actually out to make and not spend right?. All or some of them become applicable after you attain a certain size and revenue band. A good number of people informed me that to get a current account you need to have one of the above government based certification of your entity. I needed a current account so before I got myself mired in one of the above; I went to the bank where I intended to open the current account. It is true that the private banks need some government certification to start a current account but there was a catch. It is meant for those who are not previous customers of the bank. So having an account there, there was a deviation I could latch on. People who have worked in the private banks would be aware of “deviations”, the bible of doing business. By the way the public sector banks do not require such documentation and base all their decisioning on introduction letters. But frankly how many of us have such luck. The underline in this exercise would make it fairly clear how much you as a person needs to know or have studied well enough earlier and how little you should take an opinion on face value. Go there and find out for yourselves. Yes I agree we still need the luck to find the right people. But if we were not the lucky ones we would have never wanted to step out into the wild wild west and make something of it no?

Get your rubber stamps ready, here we come.