Goods & Service Tax in India, scope for new product?

New Products / Innovation can happen, when we see a gap in the industry or because of some major policy changes introduced by the government, this was explained by Surya Narayana (Head of NSRCEL, IIMB Incubation cell for entrepreneurship) in a idea pitch meeting at NSRCEL. I think, one such major policy change is happening in Finance domain of India - Introduction of GST (Goods & Service Tax) from April 2011.

I'm not an expert in Finance domain & my knowledge of implications on process (invoicing / taxing) is less, but from the extent of debate / deliberation going on between state & central government it is going to be a major shakeout of existing procedures. Also, one of the first few Indirect Tax Codes that will have state & central government share of the tax amount.

Who are best suited to create a product that might help companies / finance auditors / government? - putting together a team with best of brains from Finance Industry (Chartered Accountants, specialized in Indirect Tax Codes) & IT Industry… can help brainstorm / conceptualize a solution that could be proposed as a solution to companies / auditors / government to enable GST transition.

Is this best suited for bigger IT companies or can start up participate? - there is definitely an advantage for big established product company to venture into this, because of government pre-conditions on existing revenues, strength of company etc (as part of any eGovernance Project bids), a startup can definitely participate indirectly through a big IT company (for government projects) or consider a pure retail play by building a next generation billing / invoicing software that provide GST compliance for the businesses.

I have been following GST thread for a while, looking out... if any IT startup, jumps into this - likely there are few startups into it already!

Good luck!

-Bhaskara