u/Fresh-Astronaut8925

Context: I'm based in India, bootstrapped, basically no funds right now, definitely can't afford to register a Pvt Ltd at this stage. Building a project based learning platform for data science and ML folks who've done a hundred tutorials but still have no real portfolio to show for it.

Here's where I've landed on payments and I want to sanity check it before I launch.

For Indian users, I'm signing up on Razorpay as an individual using my personal PAN, no company needed. Money goes to my personal account, and at tax time I just declare it under presumptive taxation (44ADA) since I'm under the threshold. Seems clean and legal for a solo setup at this stage.

For international users, this is where I'm less sure. Directly collecting USD or EUR payments myself apparently gets into FEMA export of services territory, which wants proper banking channels and paperwork I don't have. So instead I'm looking at using a third party reseller type payment platform that acts as the actual legal seller to the foreign customer, handles all their tax and compliance stuff, and just pays me out normally. Costs more in fees than doing it directly, but seems way cleaner than trying to handle cross border compliance myself with zero infra.

Has anyone actually done this as a solo or unregistered founder? Is this the right move or am I missing something obvious? Should I just be biting the bullet and registering before I even try to take international money?

Genuinely want to hear from people who've actually been through this, not just theory. Appreciate any real experience here.Has anyone actually done this as a solo/unregistered founder? Is this the right move or am I missing something obvious? Should I just be biting the bullet and registering before I even try to take international money? Genuinely want to hear from people who've been through this, not just what ChatGPT/Claude tells me sounds right.

Appreciate any real experience here.

Context: I'm based in India, bootstrapped, basically no funds right now, definitely can't afford to register a Pvt Ltd at this stage. Building a project based learning platform for data science and ML folks who've done a hundred tutorials but still have no real portfolio to show for it.

Here's where I've landed on payments and I want to sanity check it before I launch.

For Indian users, I'm signing up on Razorpay as an individual using my personal PAN, no company needed. Money goes to my personal account, and at tax time I just declare it under presumptive taxation (44ADA) since I'm under the threshold. Seems clean and legal for a solo setup at this stage.

For international users, this is where I'm less sure. Directly collecting USD or EUR payments myself apparently gets into FEMA export of services territory, which wants proper banking channels and paperwork I don't have. So instead I'm looking at using a third party reseller type payment platform that acts as the actual legal seller to the foreign customer, handles all their tax and compliance stuff, and just pays me out normally. Costs more in fees than doing it directly, but seems way cleaner than trying to handle cross border compliance myself with zero infra.

Has anyone actually done this as a solo or unregistered founder? Is this the right move or am I missing something obvious? Should I just be biting the bullet and registering before I even try to take international money?

Genuinely want to hear from people who've actually been through this, not just theory. Appreciate any real experience here.Has anyone actually done this as a solo/unregistered founder? Is this the right move or am I missing something obvious? Should I just be biting the bullet and registering before I even try to take international money? Genuinely want to hear from people who've been through this, not just what ChatGPT/Claude tells me sounds right.

Appreciate any real experience here.

Quick context: I'm building an ed-tech platform out of India, project-based learning for data science/ML folks who've done the tutorials but have zero real portfolio. Bootstrapped, basically no funds right now, definitely can't afford to register a Pvt Ltd yet.

Here's where I've landed and I want to sanity check it before I actually launch.

For Indian users, I'm signing up on Razorpay as an individual using my personal PAN, no company needed. Money goes to my personal account, and at tax time I just declare it under presumptive taxation (44ADA) since I'm under the threshold. Seems clean and legal for a solo setup at this stage.

For international users, this is where I'm less sure. Directly collecting USD/EUR payments myself apparently gets into FEMA "export of services" territory, which wants proper banking channels and paperwork I don't have. So instead I'm looking at using a third-party reseller-type payment platform that acts as the actual legal seller to the foreign customer, handles all their tax/compliance stuff, and just pays me out normally. Costs more in fees than doing it directly, but seems way cleaner than trying to handle cross-border compliance myself with zero infra.