[namanyayg]

One aspect that seems to be missing is the abuse of the free credits provided for new companies by AWS, Azure, and other providers.

I know of a friend's company in India who purchased inference, at 4% of the actual price and states that it gave him an unbeatable competitive edge in their large running video influence pipelines. Any new competitors could not offer their pricing at all.

Primarily that operated because registering a new company getting free AWS credits was a very tiny cost

[mlenhard]

I was going to cover this in a follow-up article, but yeah, there are network of token brokers who buy unused credits from startups and then resell them.

[thenthenthen]

Thanks matt for including the Mandarin terms and the great article!

[hahahaa]

A bit like setting up a supermarket that just sells another competing supermarket's "free fruit for kids" fruit.

[namanyayg]

I should have added that I ran my first startup in India for 8 years before moving to the states, that's why I have an insider view.

[juleiie]

Video influence pipelines from India huh?

No wonder social media is so shit nowadays. All that brainwashing and propaganda from third world countries, now at 4% the price!

[WheatMillington]

If we're going to insist on continuing to use the offensive language of "third world country", at least apply it correctly. India is not what even the most casual racist would consider "third world".

[unmole]

> India is not what even the most casual racist would consider "third world".

I don't follow. India was Third World in the original Cold War sense as a founder and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and it still fits the term's colloquial sense through low GDP per-capita, poor HDI figures, weak state capacity, corruption and uneven infrastructure.

The label might be offensive, the comment you responded to most certainly is. But excluding India from the Third World is hard to justify.

[4848488448]

the in India wasnt even needed no worries

[ac2u]

Some countries have more complexity to registering a new company than others, and perhaps it’s the establishment of a new legal entity that is an unlocker to the free credits.

I don’t know if that’s true of India or not, but I like to give comment authors the benefit of the doubt that being specific about the geography was helpful context here

[manquer]

India is very bureaucratic and slow for starting a new business new entity. It ranked 63rd on the most recent world bank survey of 2020[1], and it is even more painful to close one.

[1 ]https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/130...

[cannonpr]

So that report was discontinued after relatively proven statistical gaming and interference by several countries, doesn’t exist post 2020. Post 2020 SPICE+ launched making registration trivially fast. However really the trick isn’t creating and closing companies, it’s that the fact majority of reporting that would catch scam companies like these just get ignored and gather small civil penalties payable years later or not at all, while keeping up with major reporting that might close their bank accounts… it’s a very disorganised system that facilitates a lot of unpleasant activity.

[inigyou]

What's the scam? Generally a country's governance system wouldn't get involved in a dispute this trivial between a foreign company and an individual.

[cannonpr]

I didn’t make any claims towards spesific scams, just a lack of effective mechanisms to hold companies accountable, a lot of countries governance systems do indeed have audits and mechanisms to address companies making large numbers of individuals unhappy or where large number of individuals feel they are being treated unfairly.

[Ekaros]

Honestly if company size of Amazon is not doing their due diligence that is their own fault. It is not that big of ask for them to spend say a day or week evaluating these things.

[manquer]

The world bank is best quality source I could find, if you know a better source or any fact contradicting the claim India is high friction for general ease of business, that would be welcome.

[cannonpr]

Look up the third edition B-READY once it drops this year, that should be the best one then.