Monday, December 9, 2013

Dealing with the New Online FRRO Renewal Process

Blurg. You do know what the FRRO stands for right? Supposedly it stands for the Foreigner's Regional Registration Office, but we foreigners call it either the Foreigners' Rectal Reaming Office or simply just the Seventh Circle of Hell.

Every time you need to renew your visa and residency permits, it seems the rules have changed. This one seems like a pretty big change because now you can supposedly do the entire process online, schedule your appointment and show up at the appointed time and get your paperwork done.

Really. But in reality, absolutely not.

The web site to use is: http://www.indianfrro.gov.in/frro/menufrrodoc.jsp

In Pune, you need to file your renewal request at least 15 days prior to your visa expiration. In Kolkata and Gurgaon, it was 60 days prior (and it still took 8 months after expiration for the Gurgaon FRRO to finally issue my full year visa). In Delhi, I believe we had 30 days to renew... not sure, though.

The application is pretty self explanatory. Do make sure you temporarily save your form and write down your Temporary Application ID. You'll be going back and forth on this form until you get all the data filled in and some doesn't stick, for example, when I add my son into the form as a dependent, the data disappears. Also if you have had your visa renewed before, that data will disappear, too. Nice work QA people.

Paperwork For Employment Visas:

  1. Original valid passport and visa.
  2. Residential permit and extension form.
  3. Passport size photo.
  4. Copy of passport photo page showing validity dates.
  5. Copy of India visa.
  6. Terms and Conditions of Employment letter with salary, title, on company letterhead, signed and stamped with corporate seal.
  7. Statement of Undertaking on company letterhead, signed and stamped with corporate seal.
  8. Copy of passport or other valid ID of Indian national signing your company letters.
  9. Bank Statements (I did last three months).
  10. Copy of PAN card and income tax receipts (showing you are up to date with your Indian income tax payments for current year). If your company can provide a preliminary Form 16, that might work.
  11. Another letter from your company explaining why you need to extend your visa for another year. Again, on company letterhead, signed and stamped with corporate seal.
  12. Company incorporation paperwork.
  13. Proof of residence - NOTARIZED lease agreement.
  14. "C"-Form.
  15. Police Clearance.
Once you have completed the online application, you need to upload scans of your passport photo and mandatory documents. Good luck with this. I scanned my photos at 300 DPI, resized then to 3.5 cm square, and tried to upload. No dice. First the document size was 10.5 centimeters according to the error message. So I resized down to 3 cm square. Now it stated it was 7.5 centimeters. I resized the DPI to 72 pixels per inch and now it was erroring in the other direction - too small at 2.5 centimeters. I spent over an hour carefully resizing and downsampling the image in Photoshop to no avail. I gave up. Making the image 192 pixels square was too big, and resizing it it 191 pixels was too small. I felt like Goldi - fricking - locks.

Here's where it gets even more ridiculous. Good luck getting the correct forms. Since we're also moving house, we needed to get a new "C"-Form for each of us, which needs to be processed at the Police Commissioner's House in Pune. This cannot be done by the foreigner. Your landlord is required by law to do this. You all need to show up and bring your passports and original permits just in case he asks for them. The "C"-Form Counter is only open Monday - Friday from 10-2 and 3-6 PM. They lied when we asked if they were open on Saturday (every other counter was open EXCEPT the "C"-Form Counter). Thanks for wasting my time. AGAIN. We came back again on Monday, only to have the jerk smirking and making us jump for every little thing. He wanted two copies of certain forms, just some. We went to make copies, and then he found another page that needed a second copy. So went and made more copies, then went back again. Now he decided the lease needed to be notarized. So we went back out to find a notary. That took another hour and we returned again, just before they were closing the counter for lunch. He finally stamped the damned papers. Step 1 done.

The next step your landlord has to do is the Police Clearance. You will probably have to accompany them there as well, at least once. Don't say or do anything. Let your landlord handle this completely. Just smile and wave at the police officer if he looks at you. Do not engage. You'll need just about everything you needed for your "C"-Form. We went three times last year and it required a bribe from the person helping me (my broker). We're still trying to secure this paperwork for this renewal process and we only have six days before we are in trouble - we have to get all this stuff done and ready by the 15th, I have been working on this, generating all the paperwork required, for over a month. It's exhausting.

Next, you have to scan your documents. Now, it says only the photo is mandatory. If you have a different visa type, there may be other forms which need to be uploaded before you click on the button to set up an appointment. None of them can be more than 200K. They all have to be PDFs. Every single one of my documents is at LEAST 2 MB. I'm pretty much screwed unless I downsample these documents to basically unreadable, but hey. Not much else I can do. I can't even get the photo upload to work. I'm dreading this next time sink of downsampling all these documents - like I don't have anything better to do with my time. I think I will skip this since only the photos are required.

My next post will hopefully end on a positive note - that we finished the process successfully. I will fill you in with tips and tricks that worked for us in that post. Good luck and share what's worked for you.



Wednesday, August 28, 2013

e-Commerce Goes to the Dogs Here in India

I recently connected with an entrepreneur in Delhi on Linkedin who was looking for advice on how to improve their web site. Rashi Narang operates "Heads Up for Tails", an e-commerce web site that sells food, pet toys, accessories, apparel, bowls, beds, and more.

http://www.headsupfortails.com

I gave her some ideas on how best to tweak the site, and suggested a number of activities she could try to get more exposure. Her site's colors are fairly quiet, but it's busy with animated graphics - a little extra effort is required to understand the mechanics of the site as a user. Her use of big photos, with lots of "cuteness", helps lift the web site experience and engages the user. Her payment process is straightforward (with one minor glitch in Chrome - the checkbox to make the shipping address same as billing address did not work), and offers Cash on Delivery, a big part of online shopping here in India. E-COMMERCE PROFESSIONALS IN INDIA: Always offer a COD payment option. It's the bulk of the payments for e-commerce sites in India. She has successfully connected her social media pages and has made it easy for people to share the site. Overall, it's well thought out.

I told her that I loved her product offering (She has a whole section called "Awesome Toys"!). I told her that I planned to buy a couple of her customized collars for my own pups.

Then she did something super nice. Unexpected. For taking a few minutes out my schedule to give her a thoughtful answer, she offered to send the collars to me, free of cost, as a thank you for my time. Of all the people I have ever advised, she was one of only a handful to ever thank me for doing so. Which brings me to another topic. Mentors, uncles, whoever you go to for advice, should be appreciated for their time. A simple thanks is all that's expected because mentors enjoy sharing ideas, watching people get better at what they do, change their way of thinking, sometimes change their life. Regular updates of what you tried, what you learned, examining what failed are ways to deepen your relationship with that mentor. It what makes us do what we do, with little expected in return.

The collars arrived yesterday. As soon as the guard brought the package and tore it open. They were beautifully wrapped in colourful tissue paper with each collar individually wrapped in plastic for protection. The imitation leather is thick and sturdy, far stronger and well constructed than I had expected. The little rhinestone letters spelling out their names looked awesome! I couldn't wait to get home to try them on the pups.

These photos aren't the best, and the dogs weren't cooperating, but I hope you get a sense of Heads Up for Tails' product line. They're gorgeous and I plan to visit the site often, especially seeing how quick their delivery was. :-) If you have pets, check out "Heads Up for Tails". I'm sure you will be as delighted as I was.

Eunice, dozing with her new collar.

Eunice, dozing with her new collar.

Ethel, liking her new collar.

Ethel, showing the other side of her collar.

Eunice again.

Ethel.

Don't they look cute? :-)