Dear Rishikesh,
First of all best of luck for your ventures.
I am a Mangt graduate and not a law grad - I am also i the same boat like yours evaluating some ideas of staring new ventures. Basis my limited elarning I am explaining you some aspects with regard to the questions.
Request you all experts to excuse me and correct me if there is something said my me which is contrary to the general practice.
1. Please evaluate between a partnership firm and pvt ltd. company. My view is that starting a pvt limited would always be ideal especially when you are starting a impex firm. This would reduce your liability from the unfortunate events should any occur. a partnership is easiler to open and close on a com][paritve scale to company pvt ltd, but the liability is more in partnership as compared to pvt ltd.
2. Regarding number of companies, my suggestion is start as individual companies with the parent company holding major stakes in others - structure as a business vertical each of the core product segments you are interested in venturing. This way when the daughter company grows bigger either you may take over or consolidate it with the parent or still run it sperately from others and keep the lesser profitabel ones away. You can then decide either to merge with the parents and then close that product line slowly later as closing a company would involve a lot of bitter process as per Indian rules. This you can decid basis the leaglities and money & time involved.
3. Please excuse me for being blunk in above but you must note and create a strategy for this - basically this strategic thought stems from the fact that electroncis product lines look lucrative for a period but also become absoluete in a very short frame and hence you need to keep changing and eveolving or adapting the ever fast changing electronics lines.
4. Registering company names will need to be done with the registerar of companies. For this you may need to get in touch with CA firms who specialise in this work of company formation. They may also throw mroe light on the aspects explained above.
5. Please discuss the liability part explained above with legal expert in company law and understand the impact more in detail.
6. Address of home is not a major concern ecept that please check if you are in an apartment the society should not have any objection in you using the residential space for commercial purposes.
7. with regard to import - first and primary step is to get an IEC number - Import Export code number which is a permanent idenfication number that you need to mention in many of the statutory filings wrt impex (import export).
8. also please make yourself conversant with Incoterms and always use LC route for payments. never pay in advance unless you are sure and it is requred. With regard to Incoterms also be careful which years incoterms you are using like 1994, 2000, 2010 etc. These all play a vital role in the transfer of title, risk, interest, property (legal dfinition) and points in time frame of payments.
9. Also you may need to apply in the bank for forex accounts separately - basic rule kep forex accounting and indian rupee accounting separately to the extent possible - as so to shield yourself from risk in forex rate changes.
10. Pls excuse me, if you are aware of the above, but as a friend thought i did highlight these to you as these are vital in the planing stages itself.
However, if you are interested to know mroe about these, please contact me and i am more than glad to share with yourself many more.
Also friend, I was brought up in chennai and did my schooling there in DAV.
Regards
