setting up an Environmental Project in India

tara joy

Hello

I just joined this Forum because i am searching around to find a solution to a problem that i have.

I am from the UK. 3 years ago My Mother and I set up a Not For Profit limited Company, registered in the U.K aimed at finding a solution to the environmental problems of Global Warming and a breakdown in the Global Fresh Water Cycle. We have been studying the very strong connection between Global Mountain Region de-forestation and this problem.
So for the last 2 and a half yrs we have spent a lot of time in the Himalayas of India researching this and a potential solution.
We would now like to get stability in India in order to run a Pilot Project. We are looking into registering our company in India but it seems that our main problem is in obtaining longterm
business visas (which is required to do this. Does anyone have any suggestions....we don't need to register our co. in India, we need to have longterm legal stability.
thankyou and i look forwards to hearing back from you*

grikoo

There have been some related threads recently, but I'll summarise what I know.

First of all, standard business visas are not inherently different from tourist visas, and have the same 6 month limit. The only difference is the stated intent. They're also only issued to people who plan to do business with Indian companies (or people who are partial owners in Indian companies).

It's possible that you could get a research visa, but generally these are only given to people attached to a university or other legitimate research organization. If your company is doing verifiable work in a scientific field, this may be good enough to get you a research visa. These are generally issued for the length of research, though your first one may only be for a year. You will most likely be asked for published journal articles and other such proof if you go this route. And expect to show proof of your ongoing work when you re-apply.

Since you're in the himalayas anyway, your easiest approach would be to get a 10 year tourist visa, and simply pop into nepal every 6 months for a few days.

If you're wanting to establish any sort of long term, legal residency, I think you'll have to set up a legitimate non-profit in India. This will require you to give controlling interest in that branch of the company to a board of Indians, which may not be something you want to do.

Or you could marry an Indian.

machadinha

? I don't think those exist for anyone but US (perhaps a very few other) citizens, and like you imply they don't seem to necessarily save you from having to get out every 6 months.

Moreover, it appears Nepal (or the Indian embassy there, rather) especially seems to be cracking down on issuing renewed visas. I've no idea how that would reflect on the fabled US 10-year visa. The precise conditions of the latter have remained a mystery to me so far anyway, despite my repeated asking for it on this board. (It seems Brits have/used to have some possible 5-year deal, which has likewise so far remained mysterious to me. Then something along those lines has been reported for Germans too. Don't ask me. And then there's the reported new regulations for many EU citizens and a number of other countries that no one seems to know the details of.

It would be great if someone could collect all that information and the stipulations; a natural drawback will probably be that it changes all the time.)

I've been appreciating some of the advice you've been giving, Grikoo, and this isn't an attack; but maybe you should take care of the seeming absoluteness of some of that advice, in several fields. It could be far more geographically or temporally or even personally defined than that.

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SMARTGUY

Hi Tara,

Welcome to Indiamike !

A foreign non-profit setting up an office in India and wanting staff from abroad needs to be registered as a trust/society/company, needs permission from the Reserve Bank of India and also a No Objection Certificate from the Ministry of External Affairs.
And if you are serious,let me know... I will pass on the referance of couple of Consultants in India who may assist you in these registration processes.

Anyways

Happy Indiamiking Ahead !

grikoo

Oh yes, forgot about that 10 year thing. It is only for the US as far as I know. My point was to get as long a visa as possible. My experience getting one was like this- I asked for a 5 year visa, paid for a 5 year visa, received a 10 year visa. Have heard similar reports from other US citizens. I even know several people who got one their first trip, and I don't know of anyone who's been turned down for one.

Entering nepal repeatedly- I'm not sure if you thought I was refering to a 10 year nepalese visa- I wasn't. I meant an Indian one. Simply get a visa at the nepalese border each time. My understanding was that as long as you have been out of the country for 3 months, that there was no issue getting another single entry visa. Could be wrong. I haven't tried it over and over and over and over.

Ironically, this is just my writing style. Don't take it too seriously. I certainly don't.

I'll be the first to admit that I know absolutely nothing about anything, and will be happy to tell you why, sounding all along like I know exactly what I'm talking about.

Shall I put a disclaimer at the top of all my posts?

dzibead

Even setting up a legitimate, registered non-profit in India doesn't give foreign nationals involved in running it any sort of residency rights or right to stay in the country long-term. This is an issue at least one of our members here is actively grappling with right now. I know a U.S. citizen who has been the co-director of a legitimate NGO in India for years. As this is an unpaid position, she doesn't qualify for an employment visa and has been getting by on a ten-year tourist visa, which she qualifies for only because she's a U.S. citizen. She combines her requisite trips out of the country with fund raising activities around the world, mostly back in the U.S.

machadinha

No, word here has it this so-called visa run is getting harder all the time. See for instance My stay in Kathmandu for Visa 25.12.06 - 3.12.06 , esp. the latest entries there, starting from post #50. Reports from people trying in Sri Lanka haven't been very optimistic either.

It could be that with say a 3-month interval this would still work, but this wouldn't seem very practical if you have business to attend to in India in the meantime (although filling this in with support work abroad like Dzi indicates would be one practical solution of course).

As for length of (tourist) visa, most other countries I know of including mine you can get a 6-month tourist visa (if at all still, again, there have been rumors of changes there) and that's it, not a day more. If however you can get a longer one in your country, go for it, of course; although again to my best knowledge and like we seem to agree, it won't exempt you from having your actual stay at any one period limited to those 6 months, after which you'll then have to face said visa run...

No, yes, you're right, and I put that too sharply, sorry. It's true: I often feel like having a disclaimer that every time I say "it is," this should be read as "according to what I have heard, I believe it may be..." One assumes this to be understood, doesn't one.

So never mind, and please do continue

grikoo

Yes, it's true. Just like having a business, it won't give you an absolute right to stay. But given that you'd be 49% the boss, it shouldn't be hard to get yourself a job and employment visa.

grikoo

Yes, I'd previously read that thread. If I remember correctly though, the post is about getting an Indian visa in Nepal?

Hopefully that will not be the case for us. We're planning on switching off between India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and perhaps Thailand and Cambodia for a number of years.

Too bad about the short visa length in your country. I was very excited to receive our 10 years.

I said 'ironically' in my last post because if you met me on the street you might never guess that I write this way (and might well have a different set of complaints). Yes, language is a problem, especially english, with the certitude of all its 'is-ness'. I try to throw in a fair number of 'probably', 'I think', 'most likely', etc. to tone it down.

Got me good grades on all my school papers though, even if I had no idea what I was talking about.

dzibead

Actually, I don't think it is all that easy. People have to jump through a lot of hoops to get employment visas and setting up and registering an NGO in India (which is a complex procedure) and then "hiring" yourself probably isn't going to work, or a lot more people would be doing it without the aggravation that others in the OP's position have experienced. I think one of the factors the GOI considers when deciding whether to issue an employment visa is whether an Indian citizen couldn't perform the function the applicant is being hired for, and they are more likely to give this question a closer look when the "hiring" is not the result of a real "arms' length" transaction but involves employing an organization "insider."

grikoo

Of course. I never said it would be easy.

However, if your UK company is a corporation, you could have the corporation set up an associated ngo in India, then have the ngo hire you for a position. You might have to get off the board of the original company (possibly not), but since it's family run that shouldn't make too much difference.

One possibility at least.

machadinha

This is so heavily misinformed though, and that's probably what I was reacting to before.

I'm surprised to find out it would be news to you that except for US citizens most people are stuck to 6-month visas.

You were mentioning hopping over the border for a few days, then you throw in 3 months, then you mention hopping all over SE Asia for several years in your own case (which I don't think any of us had any way to be aware of as you'd never mentioned it unless I missed something), which has no bearing on the original question though

I don't mind so much, however IndiaMike has some standards of providing reliable information, or at least making it clear if it's just a personal take. That is missing for me here.

As for being self-employed through a non-profit NGO set up by oneself in India: Yes, some members have been looking into that, as Dizbead had alreay hinted. It doesn't look to be easy.

dzibead

Ironically, the OP has not been back, and it's not even clear what she was talking about when she said:
"Longterm legal stability" in what respect? It's not clear whether she's looking for a way to stay in India for longer than 180 days at a time, or what. Quite honestly, I don't think we should be wasting our time discussing a question that wasn't very clear in the first place, from a person who hasn't even been back, and who seems to think she needs a business visa -- which doesn't seem to me to be the right category of visa at all, but who the heck knows what she's actually trying to do.

grikoo

I think you guys both may have misunderstood my suggestion about hopping back and forth to nepal. My suggestion was to obtain the longest possible indian visa, then take a hop to nepal every six months. My understandings regarding doing that, was that the Nepali authorities won't give any problems issuing an entry visa, so long as one has been out of nepal for at least 3 months. That's what I had previously read. I haven't tried it myself, and of course border authorities can do whatever suits them on a given day.

And yes, I am a bit surprised that european citizens don't have access to indian visas longer than 6 months. This is really true?

Machadinha, you should assume that absolutely everything I say is a personal take, as I'm not entirely sure how it could be anything else (sorry, omnipotence has eluded me thus far). Whether it's a take based on my experience, hard info, anecdotal evidence (both of these last two are simply someone else's personal take), it's all personal and subjective interpretation, and may or may not be accurate. In this thread I've simply been suggesting what seems to me to be the most likely scenarios to work out, and I'm not exactly sure what else you're looking for. Nobody can say for sure what will or will not work in such an instance (or really any instance). Imagine for a moment that we had someone on here from the indian visa bureau, would you trust what they said necessarily? I'd hope not. You'd be making an assumption based on someone's personal take about the labyrinthine indian bureacracy. They only way to really know whether something will work in India is to try it out.

But I agree, there's no point talking about it if it's not going to benefit anyone.

machadinha

I think Dzi pretty much nailed it, we should hear from OP first what she really wants anyway, I can't say it was totally clear to me, either.

I can be a real b*tch sometimes, can't I. Should shut up some of the time, really.

Thing is if people end up in Jaipur instead of Agra and don't enjoy themselves, I think that's one thing. There's a couple of subjects I take to heart though as I think it can really touch on people's lives; and health and immigration questions fall under those. And I've been trying (as I'm sure many have) for the past few years to make sense of what I can in those fields, and I should hope that other than my concerns this board in general has something to offer on it, although they are by nature the more contentious and subjective topics, and it's really hard to find anything definitive on such subjects.

And then I don't like to see new rumors (or what I consider so) slip in, I guess.

So, yes, I can be overly sharp on it, and I'm not always a nice person. Don't let it discourage you, Grikoo. You have something to say, and what we have here is a collective effort, after all.