Starting a US LLC from India

Nothing about residence in India restricts forming the LLC. You choose a state (Wyoming or Colorado, compared honestly) and the company can exist within days. Neither state's formation filing asks for the names of the LLC's members, and no step requires you to travel, notarise documents in the US or hold any US status.

What you will need from your side is unremarkable: your passport details for identity checks at later steps, banking above all, and an address. One planning note: the address you give counterparties matters more than founders expect. See the banking section.

The EIN is the company's federal tax number, and everything commercial waits behind it: banking, payment processors, marketplace registrations. A non-US owner with no SSN or ITIN can obtain one. How it works, and why timelines across the market run from days to many weeks, is covered in how to get an EIN without an SSN or ITIN.

Mercury, the default US banking choice for non-resident founders, publishes a list of countries it will not serve. In Mercury's words, it is "unable to open accounts for founders who live in – or businesses that operate or do business in – any of the countries and regions listed below. This is based on your country of residence, not your citizenship or nationality." India does not appear on that list. Source: Mercury's prohibited-countries page, read 21 October 2026. Other countries do appear, which is why a counterpart page for founders in listed countries exists.

Read that for what it is and no more. An Indian resident is not excluded by policy. It is not an approval: every application is assessed individually, and no formation company can promise you any bank's decision. Note the second half of Mercury's sentence too. Where the business operates matters, not only where you live. What sinks eligible applications is usually avoidable: address problems (a registered agent's address given as your principal place of business, which banks treat differently), vague business descriptions, and inconsistencies between the application and the formation documents. The full picture, covering requirements, the address rule and the alternatives if Mercury declines, is in can a non-resident open a US business bank account?

Mercury updates its list without publishing a revision date, so check the linked page yourself the week you apply.

This is the step that is specific to India, and it comes before the first transfer to the company, not after.

Overseas investment rules. India regulates investment by its residents in foreign entities under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. The regulations are the Foreign Exchange Management (Overseas Investment) Regulations, 2022, published by the Reserve Bank of India as notification FEMA 400/2022-RB of 22 August 2022 (read 21 October 2026), alongside the Overseas Investment Rules, 2022. Where an investment counts as overseas direct investment (ODI), the Regulations require the person resident in India to:

• designate an AD bank (an authorised dealer bank) and route the investment's transactions through it;
• obtain a Unique Identification Number (UIN) for the foreign entity through that bank before sending the outward remittance;
• submit evidence of the investment to the AD bank within six months, and report through it in the Reserve Bank's formats.

Whether your US LLC and the way you fund it fall within these rules is a question about your facts. A US formation company cannot answer it, ours included. Take it to a Chartered Accountant in India before you put money into the company.

Tax. India appears on the IRS's list of US income tax treaties (read 21 October 2026). Under those treaties, in the IRS's words, residents of the treaty country "are taxed at a reduced rate, or are exempt from U.S. taxes on certain items of income they receive from sources within the United States", and "These reduced rates and exemptions vary among countries and specific items of income." How the treaty applies to you, what India taxes and what you report in your Indian return are questions for the same Chartered Accountant. This page does not answer them.

The company you formed has a small annual calendar: a registered agent at all times, a state report once a year, and a federal information filing where it applies. Whether your LLC has to file depends on its ownership and on the transactions it had during the year. The whole calendar, with self-service costs, is in the single-member LLC compliance year.

On the US side, everything on this path is open to you, including the mainstream banking route. As the counterpart page shows, not every country can say that. The failure modes are ordinary ones: applications rushed before the EIN exists, addresses used for purposes they cannot serve, companies formed and then left uncompliant, and home-country questions left until after the money has moved. All four are avoidable by doing the steps in the order above.