Social MEdia!!

The way we communicate online has gone through a sea-change over last few years – Infact, majority of netizens spend most of their time on social Media / Networking sites. Even though India Software companies are lagging behind in adoption of social media, others are flocking them in large numbers.

Twitter has been a rage over past 1 year, Facebook has become one of the most visited sites on the web, Professionals are flocking Linkedin and keep their profiles updated. Do you want to know the numbers behind these uber-popular social media sites?

EConsultancy recently published following mind-boggling statistics on their blog – Here is a peek into the numbers

Social Media Statistics

• Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would meanat least 175m users every 24 hours.
• Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis.
• LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide..
• Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis.Six months ago, this was 250m…This means over 40% growth in less than 6 months.
• Flickr now hosts more than 4 billion images.
• More than 35m Facebook users update their status each day. 
• Wikipedia currently has in excess of 14m articles, meaning that it’s 85,000 contributors have written nearly a million new posts in six months.
• Photo uploads to Facebook have increased by more than 100%. Currently, there are around 2.5bn uploads to the site each month.
• Back in 2009, the average user had 120 friends within Facebook. This is now around 130.
• Mobile is even bigger than before for Facebook, with more than 65m users accessing the site through mobile-based devices. In six months, this is over 100% increase.
• There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.
• There are now 11m LinkedIn users across Europe.
• Towards the end of last year, the average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million.
• The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m.
• 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging, according to Technorati’s new State of the Blogosphere.
• At the current rate, Twitter will process almost 10 billion tweets in a single year.
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the USA.
• India is currently the fastest-growing country to use LinkedIn, with around 3m total users.
• More than 250 Facebook applications have over a million combined users each month.
• 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog.
• 38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.
• More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60m Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.

Mind-blogging statistics ….

 Think how they will change in next 2-3 years ! 

We will literally be living our lives online rather than offline !

STARTING BUSINESS IN INDIA-PART 1

I thought it would be a great time to put across detailed procedure on how to Start Business in India, along with the duration it will take to start your own business in India, the costs involved, the paperwork involved and procedures for starting a company in India.

Please bear in my mind that these are standard procedures and are applicable in most cities in India, however, some in some cities there are some additional (or lack of) processes that you will have to find out.

The steps given below are for incorporating a Business in the city of Mumbai.

Steps involved in starting business in India

Registration Requirements:

No:	Procedure	Time to complete:	Cost to complete:
1	Obtain director identification number (DIN) online from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs portal (National)	1 day	INR 100
2	Obtain digital signature certificate online from private agency authorized by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (National)	3 days	INR 1,500
3	Reserve the company name online with the Registrar of Companies (ROC) (National)	2 days	INR 500
4	Stamp the company documents at the State Treasury (State) or authorized bank (Private)	1 day	INR 1,300 (INR 200 for MOA + INR 1,000 for AOA for every INR 500,000 of share capital or part thereof + INR 100 for stamp paper for declaration Form 1)
5	Get the Certificate of Incorporation from the Registrar of Companies, Ministry of Corporate Affairs (National)	5 days	INR 14,133 (see comments)
6	Make a seal (Private)	1 day	INR 350 (cost depends on the number of seals required and the time period for delivery)
7*	Obtain a Permanent Account Number (PAN) from an authorized franchise or agent appointed by the National Securities Depository Ltd. (NSDL) or the Unit Trust of India (UTI) Investors Services Ltd., as outsourced by the Income Tax Department (National)	7 days	INR 67 (INR 60 application fee + 12.36% service tax + INR 5 for application form, if not downloaded)
8*	Obtain a Tax Account Number (TAN) for income taxes deducted at source from the Assessing Office in the Mumbai Income Tax Department	7 days	INR 57 (INR 50 application fee + 12.36% service tax)
9*	Register with the Office of Inspector, Shops, and Establishment Act (State/Municipal)	2 days	INR 6,500 (INR 2000 + 3 times registration fee for trade refuse charges)
10*	Register for Value-Added Tax (VAT) at the Commercial Tax Office (State)	12 days	INR 5,100 (registration fee INR 5000 + stamp duty INR 100)
11*	Register for Profession Tax at the Profession Tax Office (State)	2 days	No cost
12*	Register with Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (National)	12 days	No cost
13*	Register for medical insurance at the regional office of the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (National)	9 days	No cost

* Takes place simultaneously with another procedure.

[Source]

source

NOTE: THE ABOVE COSTS ARE EXCLUSIVE OF "UNDER THE TABLE CHARGES" AND IT MAY VARY FROM PERSON TO PERSON AND BUSINESS AND THE CITY.