No Considerations: Doing Business in India Without Bribes

Entrepreneurship can seem glamorous. But ask any business owner and they’ll tell you that the reality is a lot of hard work, long hours, and tough decisions. And where you set up shop can have a huge impact on the difficulty level of starting and running a legal enterprise.

The World Bank ranks economies on that difficulty level, in terms of costs and time involved due to regulations, in its Doing Business index.

India comes in at 130 out of 190 in that index. According to the World Bank, it takes 14 procedures and 26 days just to secure a business license in Mumbai. In practice, it can be much more troublesome and take quite a bit longer. For example, in order to even register a business, you have to already have your commercial property for the company.

In this video, economist and MRU co-founder Alex Tabarrok is on the ground at Koinonia Coffee Roasters in Mumbai to chat with one of its co-owners, Shannon D'Souza, about what it took to navigate regulatory hurdles get this small business up and running.