Sat Savior 已转推
How babus harm Indian Engineers:
I ran a US based startup. My engineering team was in India. Not in Bangalore or Delhi, but scattered across small towns and villages around UP/Bihar/Assam.
They were some of the best engineers I have worked with anywhere. The only thing they lacked was the ability to speak English like someone who went to a Delhi private school. That one accident of birth kept them off the rosters of every shiny startup.
I turned that into an advantage. I go find them. And I pay them exactly what an English-speaking engineer in Bangalore would get, without making them move. Same code, same salary. English fluency was never the skill I was hiring for.
Now I wanted to give them what my US team members had: ownership. A real piece of what they were building. For a young dude from a village in Gonda or Chapra, that can be generational, life-changing money when we exit.
But I could’t.
The moment an Indian employee exercise their options (convert them to shares), without selling anything they get taxed on the paper gain as salary (I have heard it could be as high as 42%). For a private company, no buyer, no liquidity, no cash. But they get slapped with a tax bill, sometimes larger than their salary, on money they haven't earned.
So, if I gave them equity, the choice I wd have forced on those engineers was: pay lakhs out of pocket for shares they can't sell, or give up the equity.
In the US employees pay nothing until they sell, and if they hold long enough, they may pay almost nothing at all (federal).
I have heard that in India , there is a "deferral" now. But if my info is correct, it covers ~2% of startups. Like most other startups, mine wont qualify.
The fix is one line: tax the shares when they are sold, not when they are bought. Every developed country does it. India could do it tomorrow but it does not.
Why?
Due to babus (not Nirmala S).
English
