Comment by wdr1

To add to what has already been said:

- Business law is in its infancy and local courts excessively favour the Indian side. In the event of a dispute, enforcing the terms of the contract can be very complicated or even illusory.

- Banking and insurance services are complicated, slow and expensive.

- There is not one but many different sets of legislation per province. There are gaps in the legislation and it is necessary to go through a long compliance process based on the manufacturer's or supplier's legislation, involving translation, negotiation, etc.

- Each time there is a change in decision-makers, at least part of the process must be repeated.

I work for an energy company and we have a team that has been working on an Indian project for almost ten years, without the project really seeming to have progressed.

The Indian market is a bottomless pit if you don't have a very high-ranking political sponsor in the Indian government.

india is a great market, but:

1. extremely price sensitive; zoho is regarded as expensive

2. 121 major languages in active/business use, with 22 formally recognised by government. These people may understand limited english.

3. 28 unique states plus 8 unique territories.

so in many ways its like expanding across the US, except there are 22 languages as well as 36 state law regimes, plus federal law, and then indian city law, transfer pricing regimes, currency settlement issues... etc.

China is also possible, but still price sensitive and strongly culturally prefers local solutions

edit: fixed formatting.