legal advice appreciated

Hey there all,
We are a young family, man, woman and baby. We want to move to India, Mumbai. We currently live in Hawaii and the economy is bad, very bad. Can someone please outline what we need financially and legally to get our lives in place, to own our own business, and live without doing visa runs every six months. All advice is welcome.
Thank you--looking for culture & spirituality.

What kind of business?

moshiri:
dont know much about economics - but, i dont know if you will be doing better financially in india - as i said, i'm clueless.

but if its culture and spirituality and you're looking for, then mumbai is a BIG ...

mumbai is a city of survivors... please let us not romanticise this place.
it is the toughest city IMO in india to eke out a living and maintain it - just physical space means big big bucks.
sure, there are lots of opportunities - but competition is just that much more and tougher.
you slip up for one second - you're out.

but yes - it is also a city of a workforce that i have not seen anywhere else in the country... they continue to amaze me -
their hard lives, work-integrity, butt-in-shit but with their dreams unscathed.

do a rethink about choice of city.

there are numerous threads - some links are provided below - for the business legalities etc.



:brishti

The economy is not wonderful here, either, with the stock market being something of a disaster, interest rates going up, inflation touching 12%...

And the idea that you can just walk into another country - any country - and set up a new life when things get a little tough at home is a fanciful one.

In any case, even in times of relative economic hardship, I'd guess that life in the US is considerably easier and more comfortable than life in India.

.... that is just so true.

Mumbai is the classic sh*t sandwich city ..... the more bread you've got, the less sh*t you eat.

Some of the best businessmen in the world are working hard to grow their businesses here - so competition will be tough.

oh my.....

I'll run for cover now...

I'm sure our resident expert on this will be here shortly...fasten your seatbelt.

Goodness gracious me, you aren't asking much are you?

I assume you are all just ordinary U.S. citizens, right? So unless at least one of you qualifies as a "Person of Indian Origin" (that is an actual legal term), or one of you is actually employed by an Indian company, the chances of your being able to do what you describe are essentially ... zero.

What you are talking about is trying to become immigrants to India and India is not an "immigration friendly" country. For two fairly recent discussion threads about a U.S. family wanting to move to India permanently (or at least long-term) and about foreigners wanting to set up businesses in India, see the following links:

http://www.indiamike.com/india/west-...-maybe-t54497/
http://www.indiamike.com/india/movin...-india-t55919/

If the kind of business you have in mind is just some kind of small mom-and-pop operation, you can forget it. The rigamarol required for a foreigner to do business in India is just too complicated and expensive for anything but a fairly big operation - quite apart from the immigration/visa issues you will have to face, which is a separate matter. Incidentally, having a "business visa" doesn't give a person the right to stay long-term in India anyway.

I suggest that you take the rose-colored glasses off re: India and just look for someplace to live in the U.S. that's less expensive than Hawaii - there are plenty of them. If you want a "tropical" climate, you'd be better off re-locating to somewhere in the boondocks of Florida than trying to set up in Mumbai, of all places!

you never disappoint me, dzi....

Yes, my "Spidey Sense" tingled when you made your post.

Well-done, Dzi. I'd have expected no less