TL;DR: Go LLP if you have a co-founder and want to move fast without raising soon. Pvt Ltd if you’re raising VC money and can stomach the compliance. Get a CA, virtual office, and bank account. Total damage: ₹25k-40k. Took me about 3-4 months, but should ideally take less than a month.

Howdy!

I started zappush.com in August last year. The whole thing took me 3-5 months. After a lot of confused, frustrated nights staring at a product that was ready to make money but couldn’t because I had no way to accept payments.

Every payment gateway accepting International transactions I tried wanted documentation I didn’t have.

So I’m writing this for the engineer who’s been so heads-down building that they forgot they need a legal entity to actually sell the thing. That was me.

Why bother with a legal entity?

Here’s why:

• Payment gateways won’t let you accept international payments without one. This sucks especially if the indian market is too price sensitive and you have a money hungry product.
• WhatsApp Business API requires it if you’re planning to build on it (I wanted to back 2 years ago, And no one could get me access to it)
• Banks won’t open a business account for you otherwise. You will have to use your personal account.
• Clients take you more seriously when there’s a company behind the product
• Meta Ads will flag your account if you increase ad spend too fast.
• Liability if something goes wrong, you’re personally liable. With a legal entity, there is legal separation between you and your business.

How to register your startup in India

Step 1: Get a CA

No reason to not. Whether it’s through razorpay rize, RegisterKaro, or a kind CA friend of a cousin. This stuff is not straight forward, and founders tend to love building. Let the professionals handle the boring stuff. This bureaucracy exists to slow you down by design.

You can ALSO just get a company to do it for you. Razorpay Rize takes care of a lot of pains for you (From taking care of the address, to documents, to DIN etc).

Razorpay rize does say that they charge 1499 + Govt fees for incoperation in here. In reality, They partner up with a company to take care of the virtual office address registration which also has a decent fee (this would easily charge you 17k-25k for the company address. They also usually have a more expensive GST registration plan that they try to sell you). Expect this going in!

About GST: You can register GST for free, Feel free to tell the virtual office space provider that you will do it yourself instead of using their GST package and negotiate a good deal with your CA to sort this out instead. It will most likely be cheaper for you overall.

Step 2: Pick your entity type

I was super confused what to pick. Lawyer student friends were biased towards Private Limited Company, But ex-founders wanted to avoid the regulatory hassle they brought. I ended up finding myself a co-founder, And chose LLP. This was regulatory wise simpler, While still allowing for multiple partners. Our bias towards speed made it the perfect choice.

The catch with LLP: You’ll have to convert to Pvt Ltd if you want to raise proper funding. People can’t usually invest in LLPs unless they become partners. It makes things more complicated.

The catch with Sole Proprietorship: There’s no separation between you and the business. If the company gets sued, so do you.

The catch with Pvt Ltd: More regulatory burden. Still managable if you’re ready!

Resources if you want to DIY:

• Sole Proprietorship guide
• LLP guide
• Pvt Ltd guide

Step 3: Digital Signature Certificate (DSC)

Government forms need to be digitally signed. Get a DSC from eMudhra, Sify, or NSDL. They’ll send you a USB dongle or email certificate.

Official MCA info

Step 4: Get your DIN (Director Identification Number)

Both you and your co-founder need one. Apply through the MCA Portal.

Heads up: Most tutorials online have dead links because MCA keeps changing their portal. The link above worked when I wrote this.

Step 5: Name approval

Have 3-5 name options ready. The MCA will reject anything too similar to existing companies, and you can’t use words like “National” or “Bank” without special approval.

Your CA runs the names through MCA’s RUN service. Once approved, you have 20 days to file for incorporation or the name gets released.

Step 6: File the forms

Your CA handles these:

• Form SPICe+ INC-32
• e-MOA and e-AOA
• PAN and TAN applications

Let them deal with it.

Step 7: Virtual office

A virtual office costs ₹17k-22k for 11 months and gives you a proper business address that works for everything - GST, bank accounts, all of it.

This was my biggest bottleneck. Should’ve done it first. I ended up wasting too much time figuring out how to get a proper business address, whether I have to rent a physical office or not. A quick google search would have made my life easier.

Step 8: Bank account

Call IDFC First, Axis, or HDFC. They send someone to your door with the paperwork. Takes a few days, and you’ll get a debit card for each partner.

My payment gateway nightmare

Here’s where things got frustrating.

I had a working product in 2024-2025. I was ready to launch. Then I realized that I had no way to receive subscription money.

After doing some research, I found that: Stripe: Invite-only in India. I wasn’t invited. I asked a friend of a friend to invite me, but they never responded. It slowed things down more.

Lemon Squeezy: Needed business documents. I had none. I tried reaching out to their support team, but they didn’t respond. It slowed things down more.

PhonePe, Razorpay, PayU, CCAvenue: They’d onboard me for domestic payments, but didn’t allow international payments without a registered company. My product’s target market was international and Indian pricing wouldn’t keep the lights on. Talking to each of these vendors slowed things a few more weeks.

PayPal: I ended up wanting to use this but I found a few too many reddit horror stories by indian indie devs and business owners about frozen accounts. It doesn’t have a good reputation in the space.

Razorpay (again): They create subscriptions packages in INR, but I needed USD billing. Looking back, I should’ve just launched with INR and figured it out later.

What I’d tell indie devs now

I SHOULD have just launched with Dodopayments. DodoPayments is designed for indie devs in exactly this situation. It’s a great solution and I love the team behind it :)

I am just afraid of any regulatory hammers that might come their way. Hoping for the best for them.

What it actually costs

Estimated Timeline:

How much it should take

How much it ended up taking me: 3-5 months

What went wrong:

• I didn’t know where to start. Spent weeks asking friends, reading contradictory advice, going in circles.
• Documents kept bouncing back. missing signatures and forgot my 20 day name approval limit :)
• Virtual office took forever. Almost a month to finalize. Should’ve started here.
• Payment gateway approval dragged on. Even after registration, getting approved for international transactions took more weeks.

If you know exactly what to do and have everything ready, you can probably finish in a month. Get yourself a professional to help you out for this.

Need help?

I’ve been through this, and I’m happy to help other first-time founders avoid my mistakes. Reach out: aditya@zappush.com

I’ll share referrals, answer questions, whatever’s useful. I genuinely believe more people should be starting companies, and capitalism is the best way to solving this as well :)