Company Formation in United States

[EW-Andy]

Hello,

We're an emerging IT company based in India but since US has a lot of market in IT, we're thinking to open up a company branch in there. We have some questions from fellow forum members based in United States:

• What are the requirements for opening up a branch in US for overseas companies?
• How much capital (minimum) do you think will be required?
• Which city you think will be appropriate for setting up branch office?
• The procedure?

We tried to find answers of these questions on Google but we were getting random answers so we thought (in fact, we believed) Young Entrepreneur Forum would be the best source to get these info(s).

[GlobalWealth]

Hello,

We're an emerging IT company based in India but since US has a lot of market in IT, we're thinking to open up a company branch in there. We have some questions from fellow forum members based in United States:

• What are the requirements for opening up a branch in US for overseas companies?
• How much capital (minimum) do you think will be required?
• Which city you think will be appropriate for setting up branch office?
• The procedure?

We tried to find answers of these questions on Google but we were getting random answers so we thought (in fact, we believed) Young Entrepreneur Forum would be the best source to get these info(s).

I think this is actually a great idea. I used an Indian company a few years ago for an IT project and it went horribly. We chose the company because of price and 'supposedly' quality of programers. The biggest problem we had with them was communications and cultural differences. If you had a US office, you could handle communications and project management from the US and use your Indian programmers to do the backend work.

With that said, I can help you set up the entity structure. It is not very difficult, but should be done properly to save yourself a lot of time and cost in the long run.

As far as location goes, you should set up in a location where there are no or low taxes. There are a few states where this is possible. You also would need to be in a location where you can get good staff for your firm. If you are seeking IT staff for your US office, Palo Alto - CA, Raleigh - NC, Austin - TX, and a few others come to mind.

The capital question is hard to answer. If you are only going to use the US branch for project management, then the capital outlay would be pretty minimal as you would only need a small staff and a small office. You could easily operate on 'the cloud' to keep hardware costs low as well.

Let me know if you need help or have further questions.