
New Delhi, Augb 10: Entrepreneur, that is, a person who undertakes an enterprise; a word that has become commonplace in today’s corporate environment; we hear practically every day. And yet, Akshi Singal, the focus of our story today, came to us with a unique question. She wondered – while we routinely term individuals starting new businesses as “entrepreneurs”, why don’t we hear the term being used in the context of professionals? A doctor, a lawyer or a chartered accountant who undertake their enterprise. Are they not entrepreneurs? This got us thinking – so we decided to cover Akshi Singal – a professional and an entrepreneur whose focus is on assisting growing enterprises. An entrepreneur for entrepreneurs.
Akshi Singal is a chartered accountant and holds a specialization in international tax law from the prestigious Leiden University, a law degree from Mumbai University and a B.Com (Hons) from Delhi University, where she served as Vice President of her student body. Having grown up in a house of a passionate entrepreneur, she was instinctively attracted to the idea of creating something of her own. Akshi began her career imbibing the industry best practices through over 7 years with leading firms like PWC, Deloitte and BMR. However, upon witnessing the monumental shift in the national sentiment towards promoting start-ups, Akshi decided this was the right time for her to realize her dream and start her career as an entrepreneur. She left the comfort of her job to open and run an office in Mumbai independently.
Akshi understands that an overwhelming majority of start-ups close down within five years of establishment, often due to a lack of proper professional guidance. Having advised on the buy and sell-side of investments in different start-ups, she sees an existing vacuum for growing enterprises that find it challenging to access expensive professional assistance. Moreover, such enterprises have little understanding of the complex regulatory regime they seek to function within and desperately seek trustworthy professionals who can take care of the technicalities, focusing on growing the core business. With this guiding principle, Akshi has built her practice around becoming a one-stop-shop for the regulatory needs of growing enterprises and providing end-to-end client servicing from entity selection and co-founder agreements to taxation, regulatory and legal advisory to both start-ups and start-up investment networks.
Akshi believes that while the government has brought in several regulatory changes to facilitate the growth of new enterprises and promote the ease of doing business, there remain many opportunities for reform in the legal framework that can further augment and catapult the development of the start-up community. For instance, currently, a private company is restrained from accepting deposits, with a few exceptions. A very welcome change was brought in 2017 that enabled registered start-ups to accept monetary deposits from investors. However, given the cash flow situation of many start-ups, founders often face a cash crunch. They need to approach friends and extended family for bridge financing for short intervals of time. Allowing registered start-ups to easily accept deposits from any person, albeit up to a certain amount, with minimal compliance requirements, would significantly reduce the regulatory burden on founders. Secondly, registered start-ups who have filed a declaration for exemption from section 56(2)(viib) of the Income Tax Act are immune from angel tax. However, there is no exemption for start-ups from the provisions of section 68. It requires the recipient of a share application money to prove the identity and creditworthiness of the applicant and genuineness of the transaction. These impose an unduly onerous burden on start-up founders to verify their investors’ identity, authenticity, and creditworthiness before the tax authorities. Requiring start-ups to, at the most, prove the investor’s identity and shifting the onus of proving the investor’s creditworthiness and genuineness of the transaction to the investor will greatly relieve founders from high litigation costs and heavy tax burdens. Thirdly, from the investors’ viewpoint, avid investors would be more willing to invest in start-ups if they were exempted from the capital gains tax, subject to reinvestment of profits in registered start-ups. Finally, investor interest in the start-up space would increase if their investment was eligible for a deduction under Chapter VIA of the IT Act.
Being a female entrepreneur and a mother of a 4-year-old, Akshi is deeply aware of the balancing act every working mother faces while juggling a career with personal responsibilities and family. She is fascinated and motivated by the many female entrepreneurs that have held this baton and is deeply passionate about women entrepreneurship, actively promoting female employment in her firm. She is also cognizant of the struggles women face while pursuing dynamic careers and thankful for the tremendous family support she has received to pursue her dream.
For more information: www.rksingal.com
Just want to say your article is as amazing. The clarity on your put up is simply nice and i can assume you are an expert on this subject. Fine along with your permission let me to take hold of your feed to keep up to date with coming near near post. Thanks one million and please carry on the enjoyable work.
Good write-up, I’m normal visitor of one’s web site, maintain up the excellent operate, and It is going to be a regular visitor for a long time.
It’s appropriate time to make some plans for the future and it is time to be happy. I have read this post and if I could I desire to suggest you few interesting things or suggestions. Perhaps you could write next articles referring to this article. I want to read more things about it!
Greetings! This is my 1st comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell you I genuinely enjoy reading through your articles. Can you suggest any other blogs/websites/forums that go over the same subjects? Many thanks!
I have been browsing online more than three hours as of late, but I never found any attention-grabbing article like yours. It is lovely worth enough for me. In my view, if all web owners and bloggers made just right content material as you did, the internet shall be much more useful than ever before.
Thanks a lot for sharing this with all people you actually understand what you’re talking about! Bookmarked. Please additionally talk over with my web site =). We can have a hyperlink change arrangement among us!
I enjoy your work, regards for all the great posts.
I’m impressed, I have to say. Actually rarely do I encounter a blog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me let you know, you’ve gotten hit the nail on the head. Your concept is excellent; the issue is something that not sufficient people are talking intelligently about. I am very comfortable that I stumbled throughout this in my search for one thing relating to this.
Hey, you used to write wonderful, but the last several posts have been kinda boring… I miss your tremendous writings. Past few posts are just a little out of track! come on!
My spouse and i have been so joyful Jordan managed to finish up his investigations from your ideas he came across when using the blog. It is now and again perplexing to just be giving out concepts men and women may have been making money from. And we also remember we now have the blog owner to thank because of that. All of the illustrations you’ve made, the straightforward blog menu, the relationships you make it possible to instill – it’s got most overwhelming, and it’s leading our son and us consider that this matter is enjoyable, and that is quite mandatory. Thanks for the whole lot!
you have got an awesome weblog here! would you wish to make some invite posts on my weblog?
Hello there! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I truly enjoy reading through your posts. Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that go over the same topics? Thanks!
I do not even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was good. I don’t know who you are but definitely you are going to a famous blogger if you aren’t already 😉 Cheers!