Mumbai Madness
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drllau
Feb 2, 2018, 7:25:16 PM2/2/18
to Silicon Beach Australia
For those startups contemplating a move to India to buff up their development teams, or just extend their global customer base coverage, you'd be in for a shock. Startup India touts itselft as being the forefront of fostering entrepreurship and dynamic new businesses of this century .... true .... if you are INDIAN. If you're a Kiwi from down-under and trying to get a subsidiary going, there are some serious "gotchas" that I'll ramble on about.
Landed!Mumbai, Lunch%London, Luggage ... lost @NY
Maybe it was just karma in leaving in Wintertime but by the time they finished deicing the plane, the pilots shift (or some workhour regulations thingy) was over and they had to fly in a new crew .... 9 hours after initial scheduled takeoff. So as you imagine, after hopping through a bumped hub, I landed in NY with 30 minutes to catch the last evening connection to London. Fortunately I made it but the baggage suffered a serious case of amnesia. The good news was that the London-Mumbai flight was early so I landed well ahead of schedule ... only to be stuck in immigration processing for THREE hours. Of course, after exiting, the first thing I do is look for a local SIM card which obviously tourists and weary travellers would want to avoid those international roaming charges ... beautiful airport, scenic murals, clean expansive foyer ... expansive ... and EMPTY ?!? Well there's a sign pointing to traveller services in basement but those were left-luggage and car rentals. OK, they might do this to keep the riff-raff outside so I went out to have a look .... just car parkway ... but the @#$^ security guard wouldn't let back in !! (even though I had evidence I'd just landed earlier. So no money exchanger outside ... not to worry, the internet keeps on harping about this Indian rupee Travel Card. Only to discover 4 banks later not to trust information from India banking websites who don't delete obsolete products
Capital Controls and Capitalism
People think that because it is a democracy, India is easier to deal with than China. But the indian govt has passed laws forbidding the export of rupee notes outside the country so you cannot even pick up spending cash before you arrive. The 2nd annoying discovery was find that my international credit card doesn't believe the Indian govt ... many travel and booking websites came with message that only domestic cards are accepted. And worst of all, even wallet services use standard OTP assume that only indian numbers would ever want to buy stuff so if you've an roaming phone, you are totally %^%&$%. So the order of the day was to get myself a local SIM card ... can't order directly online since hotel is not permanent residence, but the concierege told be just pop around the corner to pick up AirTel. 10 sweaty minutes later ... I see a frontage ... (closed) ... further down hopeful initial signs of an open-counter .... with a foot on it as the vendor was sleeping behind the desk (and here I thought Siestas was only Mexico/Spain cultural trait). Finally ... a store plastered with posters and plans .... that were asking Rs 1000 for a 30 day plan. What the #$%%^%&. Anyway, not having much in the way of consumer choice, I plonked down the rupees .... to be asked for my SIM !?! It turns out that many stores only sell recharge cards and accessories, you cannot get the real-deal SIM card except at a few stores actually owned by AirTel and not their distributors. The saga continues another day.
After recovering from asthma attack ... I finally got to the real-deal and had my photo of password and e-Visa ... nope, they wanted the actual passport pages ... one hotel return trip (at least there zillions of copyshops along the road) I found out they needed a passport photo. Arrgghh ... after making the pedicab drivers day, I got given the form ... name, address, OK. Local hotel and permanent residence (proof thereof) ... yadda yadd, Father/Mother name ... (now it is starting to get tedious). Emergency contact and local person to vouch for you ... WTF?!? I just landed and I can't even get a SIM card without a security check and recognition by someone who already knows me? Fortunately I can call in some favors but most normal tourists would be totally stuck at tihs point. Went back in line to wait for processing .... and waited .... and waited more. The bulblight monent was when I realised that after leaving the queue, nobody bothered to reissue me a ticket so I was not even on their radars. Talk about customer service ... and then I had to jump up and down just to get the Rs 500 receipt (sheesh, even the bus issue them for Rs10 so why not an internet savvy firm). Then they told me I had to wait up to 48 hours for it to be activated whilst the Men-in-Black ran background checks. Well, Kiwi stoaicism works in this case but the Yankee gal from Georgia was getting hysterical as she had to board a flight to Greece in 5 hours with no way to contact her friends.
The moral of the message is that financially India is its own separate orbit. China might be notorious for capital control (hah! doesn't beat the paronoic Russians) but at least with HK, it is an international currency and you and usually get things done ... if only by hiring bodyguards and suitcases full of Maos. India is a whole new story ... when we initially subscribed the equity portion, it was overpaid and the paperwork to return the excess pretty much exhausted the refund, the majority being some sort of regulatory tax/fee. Lending money is another level of nightmare with their External Commercial Borrowings regime. After fighting through the red tape (partly caused by the correspondant bank refusing to issue a inward remittance certificate which they claimed the intermediatory bank didn;t) we had to reclass them as convertible debentures to slip in under already approved equity. The bottom line is that whilst the Indian Govt may be saying they want FDI wth open arms, the middle-level bureacrats are asleep at the desk and making it really difficult to do business. So for gung-ho entrepreneurs wanting to buy-sell within India, you have to finangle your way (without the now outawed cryptocurrencies) using the so called wallets and linked bank accounts.
Musings on Mumbai
I think the people are cool and friendly, several people I met in the co-working space, offered to help with advice or even food when loose change was temporarily short, but the system is kaos. I can handle the red-tape, I've seen worst in places around the world but what really irritates me is that bit rot between what is gloriously described in the papers and internet sites ... and the reality. Example is the promised 30 day tourist SIM card sponsored by Ministry of Tourism ... which seems to have fallen into the cracks. Things can get done ... I've met some of the most friendly and intelligent hackers in the co-working spaec with many a night conversation on accelerator models, India schooling, and general geekfest ... in one bitcoin meeting, if you threw a rock every 2nd soul would be either DevOps or finNerd unlike Singapore where there are more MBAs and UX/UI designers around. Some serious hardcore talent, I met a NFC team who want to revolutionise the Mumbai transport system. When I asked how could they expect to deploy when the two smart-card readers (cf HK Octopus, SG EZcard, London TOP) would cost more than the scrap value of the bus, they showed me a plam-sized device. Much potential for emerging tech to made a big change, much like how China leapfrogged landlines with mobile but the decision-making pace can be frustraing (doesn't help with visa is only 2 months). But all the entrepeneurs I've met are passionate and optimistic about their future. Because the living costs tend to be low, the burn rate is not bad (but still doesn't beat those bottom-feeding Chinese) so they can take more care in engineering the MVP. These guys are sophsticated, they have ex-investment bankers, overseas returnees and local free-lancers in a very creative soup. I expect the teams that make it to be truly exciting plays.
Lawrence
http://www.linkedin.com/in/drllau
PS ... now that I've wriggled my way into the local payments space, anyone SBeacher who wants sales/purchase inside Mumbai contact me for reference to ease the red-tape.
Landed!Mumbai, Lunch%London, Luggage ... lost @NY
Maybe it was just karma in leaving in Wintertime but by the time they finished deicing the plane, the pilots shift (or some workhour regulations thingy) was over and they had to fly in a new crew .... 9 hours after initial scheduled takeoff. So as you imagine, after hopping through a bumped hub, I landed in NY with 30 minutes to catch the last evening connection to London. Fortunately I made it but the baggage suffered a serious case of amnesia. The good news was that the London-Mumbai flight was early so I landed well ahead of schedule ... only to be stuck in immigration processing for THREE hours. Of course, after exiting, the first thing I do is look for a local SIM card which obviously tourists and weary travellers would want to avoid those international roaming charges ... beautiful airport, scenic murals, clean expansive foyer ... expansive ... and EMPTY ?!? Well there's a sign pointing to traveller services in basement but those were left-luggage and car rentals. OK, they might do this to keep the riff-raff outside so I went out to have a look .... just car parkway ... but the @#$^ security guard wouldn't let back in !! (even though I had evidence I'd just landed earlier. So no money exchanger outside ... not to worry, the internet keeps on harping about this Indian rupee Travel Card. Only to discover 4 banks later not to trust information from India banking websites who don't delete obsolete products
Capital Controls and Capitalism
People think that because it is a democracy, India is easier to deal with than China. But the indian govt has passed laws forbidding the export of rupee notes outside the country so you cannot even pick up spending cash before you arrive. The 2nd annoying discovery was find that my international credit card doesn't believe the Indian govt ... many travel and booking websites came with message that only domestic cards are accepted. And worst of all, even wallet services use standard OTP assume that only indian numbers would ever want to buy stuff so if you've an roaming phone, you are totally %^%&$%. So the order of the day was to get myself a local SIM card ... can't order directly online since hotel is not permanent residence, but the concierege told be just pop around the corner to pick up AirTel. 10 sweaty minutes later ... I see a frontage ... (closed) ... further down hopeful initial signs of an open-counter .... with a foot on it as the vendor was sleeping behind the desk (and here I thought Siestas was only Mexico/Spain cultural trait). Finally ... a store plastered with posters and plans .... that were asking Rs 1000 for a 30 day plan. What the #$%%^%&. Anyway, not having much in the way of consumer choice, I plonked down the rupees .... to be asked for my SIM !?! It turns out that many stores only sell recharge cards and accessories, you cannot get the real-deal SIM card except at a few stores actually owned by AirTel and not their distributors. The saga continues another day.
After recovering from asthma attack ... I finally got to the real-deal and had my photo of password and e-Visa ... nope, they wanted the actual passport pages ... one hotel return trip (at least there zillions of copyshops along the road) I found out they needed a passport photo. Arrgghh ... after making the pedicab drivers day, I got given the form ... name, address, OK. Local hotel and permanent residence (proof thereof) ... yadda yadd, Father/Mother name ... (now it is starting to get tedious). Emergency contact and local person to vouch for you ... WTF?!? I just landed and I can't even get a SIM card without a security check and recognition by someone who already knows me? Fortunately I can call in some favors but most normal tourists would be totally stuck at tihs point. Went back in line to wait for processing .... and waited .... and waited more. The bulblight monent was when I realised that after leaving the queue, nobody bothered to reissue me a ticket so I was not even on their radars. Talk about customer service ... and then I had to jump up and down just to get the Rs 500 receipt (sheesh, even the bus issue them for Rs10 so why not an internet savvy firm). Then they told me I had to wait up to 48 hours for it to be activated whilst the Men-in-Black ran background checks. Well, Kiwi stoaicism works in this case but the Yankee gal from Georgia was getting hysterical as she had to board a flight to Greece in 5 hours with no way to contact her friends.
The moral of the message is that financially India is its own separate orbit. China might be notorious for capital control (hah! doesn't beat the paronoic Russians) but at least with HK, it is an international currency and you and usually get things done ... if only by hiring bodyguards and suitcases full of Maos. India is a whole new story ... when we initially subscribed the equity portion, it was overpaid and the paperwork to return the excess pretty much exhausted the refund, the majority being some sort of regulatory tax/fee. Lending money is another level of nightmare with their External Commercial Borrowings regime. After fighting through the red tape (partly caused by the correspondant bank refusing to issue a inward remittance certificate which they claimed the intermediatory bank didn;t) we had to reclass them as convertible debentures to slip in under already approved equity. The bottom line is that whilst the Indian Govt may be saying they want FDI wth open arms, the middle-level bureacrats are asleep at the desk and making it really difficult to do business. So for gung-ho entrepreneurs wanting to buy-sell within India, you have to finangle your way (without the now outawed cryptocurrencies) using the so called wallets and linked bank accounts.
Musings on Mumbai
I think the people are cool and friendly, several people I met in the co-working space, offered to help with advice or even food when loose change was temporarily short, but the system is kaos. I can handle the red-tape, I've seen worst in places around the world but what really irritates me is that bit rot between what is gloriously described in the papers and internet sites ... and the reality. Example is the promised 30 day tourist SIM card sponsored by Ministry of Tourism ... which seems to have fallen into the cracks. Things can get done ... I've met some of the most friendly and intelligent hackers in the co-working spaec with many a night conversation on accelerator models, India schooling, and general geekfest ... in one bitcoin meeting, if you threw a rock every 2nd soul would be either DevOps or finNerd unlike Singapore where there are more MBAs and UX/UI designers around. Some serious hardcore talent, I met a NFC team who want to revolutionise the Mumbai transport system. When I asked how could they expect to deploy when the two smart-card readers (cf HK Octopus, SG EZcard, London TOP) would cost more than the scrap value of the bus, they showed me a plam-sized device. Much potential for emerging tech to made a big change, much like how China leapfrogged landlines with mobile but the decision-making pace can be frustraing (doesn't help with visa is only 2 months). But all the entrepeneurs I've met are passionate and optimistic about their future. Because the living costs tend to be low, the burn rate is not bad (but still doesn't beat those bottom-feeding Chinese) so they can take more care in engineering the MVP. These guys are sophsticated, they have ex-investment bankers, overseas returnees and local free-lancers in a very creative soup. I expect the teams that make it to be truly exciting plays.
Lawrence
http://www.linkedin.com/in/drllau
PS ... now that I've wriggled my way into the local payments space, anyone SBeacher who wants sales/purchase inside Mumbai contact me for reference to ease the red-tape.
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