nirav March 1st, 2007
Ashok Karania, Magnet’s MD & CEO, will be on BBC World television tomorrow, morning 7.15 & 9.15 IST. He will be giving his opinion on the Union Budget 2007 - especially how it affects entrepreneurs and IT sector.
He is going to be sharing his views along with Pradipta from Zensar/RPG. Went for the interview today, and I am keen to see how it comes out tomorrow 
The budget makes it difficult for an IT company. I hope the opinions of people from IT are heard and the governement takes some corrective actions!
Some images from the interview (pardon the quality, shot them with my camera, these are not straight from BBC)
- bbc , ashok , ceo , karania , interview , ashok , zensar , opinion , karania , will , ist , Budget , Union , India , magnet , 2007 , IT , tomorrow , bbc , amp , Business
nirav February 28th, 2007
The Indian Union Budget came out yesterday. And the IT industry is not happy about it. Well, we got shocks too! The tax holidays for export oriented companies are no more. So we got to pay minimum 10% tax. There is now an additional tax on rented commercial premises - 12.5%. And ESOPs are covered under FBT now!
What does it mean? It means the margins go down - from the already low positions! The cost of renting a premises is very high in a city like Mumbai, and if we have to pay 12.5% on top of it, it’s just crazy. When it comes to premises, they already have it so bad - you have to pay taxes for about 100% of the rent itself now. The owner will not bear them, so the burden comes to you! And if you pay double rents, you may be losing all your profits right there if you are a medium size IT company in Mumbai! If it’s not that good, you may even go red.
The 10% minimum tax too is bad. We got the tax exemption after so many formalities and hard work. Now we even lost that advantage.
The budget does not make an ITentrepreneur happy. It disappoints him. This is not good!
