How to start a startup in India – 7 Essential Steps to Follow

Do you know the difference between a startup and starting a business? If not, here you can get all information on how to start a startup in India. India is the third biggest country that introduced most startup businesses to the world.

What is a Startup?

A startup is a business model where an individual person or some partners starting a new business with almost no investment and with a unique concept of a product or service.

In this business model, an entrepreneur or group may introduce new problem-solving products, services, or concepts to the market. Which are targeted a specific customer needs or problem-solving by the product or service.

The success of any startup is based on the number of customers who may use this product or service to solve their problem. A startup can be started in any sector or field, and it can be a unique concept or product of real or existing business and product. Also, it may be a new innovation of product or service of present and future requirements.

In India, there are multiple startups are successfully run their business and provide better services and products to their consumers. Zomato, Paytm, Flipkart, Medlife, Oyo, and Yatra are some of the most popular startup names in India.

All these startups started as a small business with the focus of specific niche or segment and successful over time. According to a survey, 1300 startups within 7 unicorns are introduced in 2019, in India.

And (DPIIT) the Department for the Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, which is under the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, has recognized over 27,916 startups, as of February 1, 2020.

How to start a startup in India- Essential Steps

Startup businesses are based on a unique idea or concept. To implement any idea to a real demanding product or service Entrepreneurs must-have detailed steps to follow.

To successfully establish any startups need massive efforts, dedication, proper market research, and documentation knowledge is essential. In this post, I will try to describe every step to execute a startup and run successfully.

1. Market Research-

Research is the first and crucial step to success in any business. And a precisely researched concept may get massive success. Your idea could be interesting for you and some others, but to convert your idea into a real product or service, you need to do market research.

Market research will give you an overall idea about customer behavior, their needs, estimate price range, competitor status, and many other analytical data.

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2. Prepare your business

After getting information about your product or service requirements and customer interest you must tuck your belt. It’s required to analyze your capability of finance.

If required, find a business partner because with a partnership you can manage your business easily. The benefits of doing small business startups in a partnership reduce your financial loss risk by almost 50% and prepare you to face any difficulties during the business scale up.

Keep in mind, preparation is the second essential thing to start and scale up any business. So carefully summarize all your resources, capital, and your blueprint of the business plan.

You must create a business plan and mention every single root to follow, in it. Because without a business plan you may easily forget some essential work during the doing business and it may cost you much harder.

And also, you need a business plan to raise capital for growing your startup and your investor may want to see to understand the market potential of your startup business.

3. Register your Business or company

When you completed research and analyzing steps, it’s time to register your startup business in a legal entity. Registering a startup business or company will increase your trustworthiness in your customers.

And the other side it will secure your startup to any legal complexity and difficulty.

You can incorporate your business as Proprietorship Firm, Private Limited Company, Public Limited Company, Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) and Partnership, etc.

You can also register your startup business in the Startup India campaign an initiative of Govt. of India. We will discuss below how you can register your startup on the Startup India portal.

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4. File for Intellectual Property Rights

It is the most beneficial step for an entrepreneur to start up a new venture. IP Intellectual Property Rights acquiring in the starting stage of your business can be secure you in competition.
There are four types of (IP) Intellectual property rights registration:

• Trademarks
• Copyright
• Trade secrets
• Patents

With filing for intellectual property rights, you can secure your product or service uniqueness and secrets with your competitors for a certain time. And of course, you must make sure your product or service is not an exact copy of any existing brand and product.

5. Create Your Brand

Branding a product or service is another important factor to create a startup to become a successful business. As you know every brand has a unique logo, color theme, specific fonts, and images, etc. you need to set up your personal branding to represent your product or service.

You can also register a domain name for your business it can help to recognize your startup online. Branding also helps people to identify and remember your product or service without any difficulty.

6. Capital/Fund for Startup

Every business needs funds or capital to successfully run the business. For a startup, you also may need the capital and it is possible because of the Angel Investors and venture capital firms. But also it’s not easy as you thought might be.

As I said above, to raising funds you must have a proper business plan, and you need to mention every expense and capital you required for doing business. And also, clearly tell the benefits and future scope to the investors, if they agree to invest in your startup.

7. Register on Startup India Scheme

Startup India is the best initiative taken by the Indian Government to promote entrepreneurship (who starts a startup) by reducing difficulties of legal formalities, provide business loans information, give tax rebates, and makes proper ecosystem to the startups, etc.

Anybody can register their business on startup India who qualifies the conditions of startup guidelines. The registration process is online; to register your startup on Startup India you need to visit www.startupindia.gov.in and fill the complete details in the provided form on the site.

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After that you need to upload required documents in PDF format; these three documents are required
a. Recommendation Letter
B. Registration/Incorporation Certificate
c. Business Description

After submitting all documents, you need to give an answer about tax exemption benefits, if you opt for taking these benefits, you must submit the recognition certificate issued by DIPP (the Department for the Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade) government of India.

Startups recognized by DIPP will benefit from the income tax exemption for three years.

Once you do that next you have to self- certify all your information and documents are correct and your business turnover is not more than 25crores.

Finally, after completing all steps you will instantly get a recognition number for your application. And your startup India certificate will be issued after reviewing your all documents and details.

You need to careful during the form filling and uploading your documents to make sure all documents are correct because wrong and forged documents submission can penalize you.

Sum up

So it was all details on how to start a startup in India and growing effortlessly. I hope it’s helpful to understand all the essential steps for doing startup business in India.