India is a strong service-led economy with the sector generating a significant chunk of employment opportunities and contributing to the GDP. It contributed around 66.1% of India’s Gross Value Added (GVA) growth in 2015-16, is the biggest magnet for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and an important net foreign exchange earner. Some of the core areas of service are IT and ITES, banking and financial services, outsourcing, research and development, transportation, telecommunications, real estate and professional services.

On the whole, GST is expected to bring domestic players at par with large multinational corporations due to the renewed import and export norms and the rules for FMCG suppliers. This is a good sign for Indian trade and exports in general, and thus the implementation of GST shows promise to propel India onto the international trade arena. On an average, we see the tax slab increasing from 15% to 18% for most of the services. While this may translate to higher cost of services to the end consumer, GST also presents a whole lot of opportunities, pushing ease of business.

After the implementation of GST, though a few loop holes have cropped up but the IT VAR (Value Added Reseller) community of Mumbai is on high spirit about it. Putting forward the views of Mumbai VARs:   

Devendra Sayani
Director, DC Infotech

GST is a good initiative of One Tax and One Nation by the government. It permits to do business in a free way. There is no hazel of different taxes which is good for business. Previously when we sell products to other states there were hazels of C forms, Octroi but now all has been gone because of this one tax. Currently it is difficult to predict the business growth as it is a new structure so it will take some time to grow for the business. It will definitely give a boot to the business.

Jiten Mehta
Director, Magnamious Systems:

I am happy and having a good experience with GST because of credit, reporting etc. GST will not impact your grow, it will simplify your taxation system, so growth will happen as the focus would change as you will come out of statutory regulatory things and will focus on business. For me the streamlining has happened because multiple bodies of government have been removed. The biggest advantage is Octroi has been removed from Mumbai which make the movement of goods easy. Second it is a standard rate whether its services or goods, so there are no challenges across the country. So it has become a level playing field pan India.  

Prasad Tilve,
General Manager & Head,
Government and Strategic Alliances, Business Development, Netmagic:
GST and services are provided by GSP service providers and they need cloud  to host their services. So we treat GSPs as ISP (Independent Service Providers). We provide them robust IT infrastructure and we have multiple services like SimpliCloud and SimpliVPC. So GSP’s are hosted on this and they get excellent connectivity, visibility, support, scalable infrastructure for their businesses. TCS and Infosys are the two GSPN service providers. Infosys is hosted in Netmagic so we have the existing connectivity in proper GST network. So that serves a very low latency for all the GSP service providers.

Ravi Jalan
MD & CEO, Shakti Enterprises:

As a businessman, I was dealing with servce tax and VAT but after the implementation of GST I need to pay only one tax instead of two. So it is comparatively easier. It takes time to understand the new things but overall what we are feeling is that it’s good to pay one tax rather than two. Till now I have not observed growth in my business as government are making changes frequently.

Viren Bavishi
Director, Sapphire Micro Systems:

GST is good for trade and industry. We are looking forward to GST thinking that it would do lot of good but then initial hitches are troubling us a lot. Rather than spending a lot on benefits of GST, government should have educate the people, which is not done properly. Government should try educating people at every level. Earlier there were a lot of tax evasions on account of customs and VAT but now the evasion should have been taken care although it is not happening so far. Previously, while doing interstate business we used to end up losing some amount of CST as well as there were a lot of hazels for all types of forms which is now removed. Now, entire India has become a one single market.

Pankaj Shah
CEO, Technoplus Systems:

GST as it stands for Goods and Service Tax is good for India in the long run. There have been hiccups but it would be streamlined in another six months to one year hopefully. It is good for IT industry due to the Digital India push by the Government of India. We are having good experience and the sales have increased. There are many SMEs who have come into the GST structure due to which they are also planning for IT expansion.
GST has challenges as it is in early stage and every businessman is facing some problem with the software and return filling but it will be streamlined in future.

K R Chaube
Director, Techlink Infoware:

GST is a good step towards tax reform. The objective behind GST is to simplify taxes and we are quite optimistic about it. We are a process driven organization and we are into software products also where ERP is an important part of taxation. The only thing which we need to handle is a lot of compliances. But it is a good initiative. We do not see any challenges but we were skeptical about how it will get amalgamated. We do not know how it will impact us in future but we are optimistic that in another year’s time it may simplify things.    

Ajay Parekh
Founder, Shree Maat Computers:

As per our Prime Minister, it’s a good and simple tax and it is true. For System Integrator community the life has been simplified as there are no Octroi or Excise Duty. There no hurdle while buying any material regarding the excise duty etc, so in that way it has really simplified our life. We are looking forward for many fold growth but still there is a hurdle about paying tax, the website problem and getting credit of VAT paid material, which is obstructing the growth.

Rajesh Goenka
Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Rashi Peripherals:
Overall, post GST things have been very positive because of couple of reasons. First, pre GST the inventory level for the entire quarter had gone down. So, the moment GST was launched, everyone started to buy and as a result we saw upswing in the business especially in July, August, September. So from business perspective it was good. Second, because of the GST compliance regulation, lot of awareness has got incorporated in businesses where they are buying computers which resulted in increase of PC demand. We think this is going to be a sustainable business opportunity in a near long term scenario subject to economic conditions of India remains the same or better. The only flip side of GST is the accounting process where the amount of effort that is required is enormous. We have double up our power in accounts and finance team. So those compliance issues are there but from business point of view GST has been good and we think that it is positive and will further improve. 

Pravin Dhoka
CEO, Ortek Computers:

 The move towards GST implementation is fine but as far as IT industry is concerned we are still facing challenge  in selling goods cross territory. The domestic business has increased. Another problem that government should undertake is that they should minimize the written filing. Currently, it is around 39-40 forms which they should reduce it to one written form per month. Then it will reduce the workload and we will concentrate on our business.