Actual steps I followed to incorporate.

1. Pay a Chartered Accountant INR 25K(~500USD). SIgn some papers. 2. Wait a week for papers to arrive 3. Receive papers of incorporation.

Well ya, That's easy to say if you are working, but 25k is a pretty huge amount in India for youngsters.

Since we are talking about software startups here and making it possible to start easy and quick, it might be better to save money by doing it on your own (just take a ride in the morning to trouble the officers there everyother day, until they get fed up and get your work done). By this time, you can also prototype the product/service you are developing. Sometime(3-4yrs) back I did find a guy who advertised on paper that he would do it for 3k(around $75). I don't remember the company type though.

And he also did mention that a lot of it would actually go to officers under the table to speed up the process(=normal time) or else it would be dragged a lot. I heard it's called "paper weight" in India. If it's somewhere around 3k/$75 to get it done by a pro at this stuff, it's way cheap and time saving than doing it yourself.

P.S: I also did have this idea of incorporating a dummy corp in Delaware(US) or Nevada. Thought that would work out cheaper.

well he paid a little bit on higher side. its normally less than 10k (i paid round 8k). Let me know in case you need contact who can do in India area.

in case you want a simple partnership then it can be done for 1k-2k but it has full liability

I did the same, except it's been a month and I am still waiting for the documents to arrive. Director registration took a week and then name verification itself took another couple of weeks. :(

How much does it cost to pay an 'agent' to help it through the process?

I don't know much about this area, what's notable about this?

This explains the stupid bureaucracy in India. Doing a startup walking to the illiterate/barbarian government office is such a pain in the ass in India. To do complete all the formulates might take at least a month if you are foreigner then its endless.

Hah, well if that's illiterate/barbarian then I'm mightily impressed by the 'barbarians'. Digital signatures, web based corporate registration. A lot of 'civilized' countries could take an example or two from that.

A month is absolutely nothing.

I guess its a addendum to "Why so few sw product startups in India"

How does this procedure compare to similar procedures in other parts of the world? Better? Worse?

About the same to The Netherlands.

We just visited the Chamber of Commerce to start a partnership. The person taking our registration just asked us a bunch of questions. (Names, SSN, address, etc., limitations to executive powers of the directors, name of the company, type of work done by the company, etc.) We showed him our passport, we paid about 100 euros and we were outside in an hour.

Bonus was that our Chamber of Commerce was conducting an experiment with the tax service where registering at the CoC would also give our data to the tax service. We got our tax number and papers by mail, instead of having to visit the tax service and filling out forms etc. there.

Do you have any idea what are the conditions for foreign students (non-EU) to start a company in the Netherlands? I'm very much interested in launching my own startup here but everybody I ask gives me a conflicting answer.

Hmmm... Not really. I suppose your permit for staying here("verblijfsvergunning") should allow you to work. Maybe they have a different category for starting companies.

If you want to know for sure, you should contact the Chamber of Commerce: http://kvk.nl/ That's where you should register your company, so they probably know this (or know who can tell you).

Thanks for the tip! I'll contact them.

In Australia, it takes a day. Three steps to open a business, and you can complete them on one day.

and AUD$400.

It took an hour of my accountant's time to start my brother's business in MN USA (complete with name search, federal and state paperwork). I think it cost about $150.

Yep -- $170 to the Secretary of State for 'express' service online; get an EIN online with the IRS; get an MN tax id online with MN-Revenue.

You can open a bank account with just your articles of incorporation and an EIN, so you can do that on the same day as well, although I waited until the next day.

It really takes more time to learn what steps you need to take than to take them, in the US. At least if you're doing it the first time and are fairly conscientious about it.

All in all, I am very happy with how easy it is to set up a business in the states.

I don't know, but it's weird to single out India, you might as well have that article for every other country in the world with a couple of variations.

India is one of the bigger IT players though, so maybe that's the reason.

we could may be look at this link as a first step towards achieving what you say... let us all chip in..

In Brazil, it is quite easy and cheap to open a business, but it is hell to close it, even more so if you had employees.

Seems easier than setting up a WOFE in China (wholy owned foreign enterprise)...

Well it is cheaper than Denmark. If you want the company to assume liability they have to have at least 160000kr - which is something like $32000. Not all of it has to be in cash, but there has to be enough to pay taxes of any income including the initial founds.

Now if you are prepared to assume the liability yourself it gets a lot cheaper, but at that point why start a company.

If it is anything like in Sweden, you start a company even with the full liability (sole trader/enskild firma) because it has tax advantages. It then cost about USD 145 and was dead simple.

Sure tax gets much simpler that way, but given that I can start a company in the UK for a pound, it feels foolish to do it in Denmark (could also be that I love London more than Denmark).