Doing business in India still not very easy

By Vipin Agnihotri

No one is going to argue with the fact that India is inching up the scale in terms of the ease of doing business. In my opinion, it seems to be moving quicker as compared to countries like China but still India has miles to go before it can catch up.

According to ‘Doing Business 2008’ report of World Bank, India improved its overall rank on ease of doing business to 120 out of 178 countries, up from 134 last year. If experts are to be believed, improvements occurred in mainly two areas, getting credit (a increase of 26 points) and cross border trade (a increase of 63 ranks) helped. On the other hand, China’s rank rose to 83 from 92.

It has come into the notice of The India Street that India has shown a decline on the other eight parameters, mainly because of other countries reforming much quicker. The most serious slippage of 18 places was in ease of starting a business.

It is worth mentioning in this regard that India requires entrepreneurs to go through 13 procedures, which by the way is double the average for developed nations and 50 per cent higher than its regional peers. In an ideal scenario, business owner will require at least 33 days to start a business in India.

Point to be noted here is that this World Bank report scope is restricted to business regulations, therefore there is an every possibility that the rankings may not tell the whole story. In my opinion, this is certainly the case with India, since the World Bank report links the pace of reforms to equity returns possible in the country.

Another issue is the roadbocks to foreign branded retail and opposition to loal retailers like Reliance Fresh. Walmart India is quietly entering Mumbai while other foreign brands are knocking on the door to India. The reception is luke warm by business people and violent by local opposition leaders.

Theoretically speaking, investors look for upside potential and they find it in economies that are reforming, irrespective of the starting point. Fact of the matter is that equity returns are the quickest in countries which are reforming the most and becoming transparent. While India may relish the returns and pace of reforms to date, things could be even better if there is improvement in tax payment systems, additional FDI reforms, and property registrations.

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Top 40 India Business Sites

According to Alexa, the sites below are the top 40 business related sites in the country of India. It’s interesting to note that Yahoo leads the pack, although Google seems lead in most of the rest of the world. I suspect if you count all of the Google site traffic (Google India, Google.com, Orkut, and Google Syndication) Google may be the #1 site in India. The first India owned site comes in at #5, where Rediff makes a strong showing.

1		Yahoo!	Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.
2		Orkut	Social networking and discussion site operated by Google.
3		Google India	Indian version of this popular search engine. Search the whole web or only webpages from India. Interfaces offered in English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil.
4	Google	google.com - Site Info	Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company's focus is developing search technology.
5	Rediff.com India Ltd.	rediff.com - Site Info	Online portal with free e-mail and many other services.
6	Microsoft Network (MSN)	msn.com - Site Info	Dialup access and content provider.
7	Naukri.com	naukri.com - Site Info	India's No. 1 job site.
8	Blogger.com	blogger.com - Site Info	Free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates to a site via FTP.
9	Windows Live	live.com - Site Info	Search engine from Microsoft.
10		indiatimes.com - Site Info	Portal site; includes news stories under subject headings, and links to other information sources.
11	MoneyControl.com	moneycontrol.com - Site Info	MoneyControl.com is India s leading financial information source. It s the official site for CNBC TV18, and provides news, views, and analysis on equity / stock markets, commodities, personal finance, mutual funds, insurance and loans.
12		sify.com - Site Info	India s leading portal for news, business, shopping, sports, movies, vedic astrology, food, and bollywood videos for Indians and NRIs. The largest Indian Community
13	Monsterindia.com	monsterindia.com - Site Info	Job Search Site
14	Facebook	facebook.com - Site Info	A social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study, and live around them.
15		icicibank.com - Site Info	Offers a wide range of banking products and financial services to corporate and retail customers.
16		clickjobs.com - Site Info	ClickJobs.com is built around the promise of matching talented professionals with dynamic organizations. The company leverages the rich experience of its group company, BharatMatrimony to provide superior services in all aspects of client operations.
17		digitalpoint.com - Site Info	Offering FileMaker, MySQL and Oracle hosting since 1999.
18		googlesyndication.com - Site Info
19		icicidirect.com - Site Info	Online share and mutual funds trading facility by the ICICI group.
20		timesjobs.com - Site Info	A database of jobs advertised in India for positions in India and abroad. From the Times of India Group.
21		bseindia.com - Site Info	The Stock Exchange, Mumbai current quotes, data, securities information.
22		starware.com - Site Info	India Search Engine
23		wordpress.com - Site Info	Blog Tool
24		amazon.com - Site Info	Amazon.com seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Site has numerous personalization features and services including one-click buying, extensive customer and editorial product reviews, gift registries, gift certificates, wish lists, restaurant and movie listings, travel, and photo processing.
25		oneindia.in - Site Info	OneIndia, as the name signifies, provides all information related to India under ONE roof. We specialize in India languages.
26		bbc.co.uk - Site Info	Headline ticker will automatically update throughout the day with the latest news, sport, travel, finance and weather from the BBC. Available for multiple OS platforms.
27		99acres.com - Site Info	Real estate portal featuring listing of properties. Includes a property gallery and search.
28		hdfcbank.com - Site Info	Information about services offered to resident Indians, NRI's, and companies. Links to its subsidiary companies.
29		about.com - Site Info	Directory features links, articles and reviews.
30		google.co.uk - Site Info	The local version of this pre-eminent search engine, offering UK-specific pages as well as world results.
31		passport.net - Site Info	This is now Microsoft
32		information.com - Site Info	Business and Consumer information site
33		linkedin.com - Site Info	Business Networking Site
34		ibnlive.com - Site Info	Most comprehensive coverage of news, videos, Bollywood, music, politics, cricket and blogs nformation from India.
35		msn.co.in - Site Info	Microsoft India Portal
36		adobe.com - Site Info	Provides a range of products for digtal media creation and editing, multimedia authoring, and web development. Site contains extensive documentation and support for all software.
36		sifybroadband.com - Site Info
38		ndtv.com - Site Info	New Delhi Television
39		nseindia.com - Site Info	India securities market information, including real time graphs, information.
40		indiaproperty.com - Site Info	Real estate portal featuring listing of properties. Includes a property gallery and search.
41		answers.com - Site Info	An ad-supported reference search service, which displays concise answers drawn from over 100 encyclopedias, dictionaries, glossaries and atlases.
42		ibm.com - Site Info	Website for International Business Machines Corporation

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