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Bengaluru founder avoids ₹4 LPA CA fee, discovers unexpected hidden cost of cheap services
To save money, a founder hired a cheap CA firm in Bengaluru instead of paying ₹4 lakh, only to end up training them.
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An entrepreneur who hired a Varanasi-based accounting firm to save money over expensive Bengaluru rates revealed why cheap services can backfire. While trying to cut costs while bootstrapping a business, the IIM-educated founder discovered that the distant firm lacked e-commerce tax expertise. She ended up personally teaching the accountants how to handle marketplace filings.
“I hired a CA company based out of Varanasi to file taxes because every CA firm in Bangalore was quoting at least 4 Lakhs annually for the same. Even if the sales were next to zero,” IIM alum Dania Faruqui wrote on LinkedIn.
She continued that ₹4 LPA matters a lot when a founder is bootstrapping. Hence, she decided to go with the Varanasi company, but within ten months, the founder understood why the Bengaluru firm charged more.
“It’s because I’m the one teaching them everything about filing taxes on sales from marketplaces like Amazon. They have no clue about getting different reports.”
The founder claimed, “Over the last 1 year - I have memorised the pathway to getting all tax-related documents from Amazon Seller Central. Not just this, every now and then, I get the queries solved from Claude and maybe some other founders in the D2C space and educate my Varanasi CA firm.”
That’s not all, the founder shared how the firm was left shocked when she “dropped another bomb on their head”, asking the team to file tax returns for 5 different GSTs.
“My CA went into shock. His only comeback was - we will need to increase the fees of our services. I said, yes definitely, you can increase it. Whatever fees you increase - I would like to charge the same as my fee of educating your team. We had a good laugh about it.”
Faruqui wrote, “Boot-strapping a venture ain't for the weak-hearted” and concluded her LinkedIn post.
What did social media say?
An individual posted, “Such incidents teach us that being dependent on ordinary doubles our work instead of making our life simpler. It feels like they have hired us.” Another commented, “Try Chennai, efficient and much cheaper than Bangalore.”
A third expressed, “Bootstrapping teaches you one thing quickly: every expense has to justify itself. Great example of learning the business while building it.” A fourth wrote, “Bootstrapping is really hard and not every person's cup of tea. One day, you are an individual meeting with a high-profile client; another day, you are standing on the field, solving a minor issue. One has to wear so many hats to get through, but I just realised that we have to pay to the others and teach them as well.”
