Freelancers and agencies in India who work for foreign clients lose hours — and lose sleep — to tax paperwork. Setulfo does the boring, scary part for them automatically, without ever touching their money.
When an Indian freelancer bills a client in the US or UK, the government treats it as an "export of services." That unlocks a maze of rules most people don't understand — and getting them wrong means penalties, frozen bank accounts, and tax notices.
A form you must re-file every April. Miss it, and every foreign invoice that year suddenly owes 18% tax.
For every payment you need a bank certificate proving the money came from abroad. Most gateways don't hand it over automatically.
Export invoices need special wording, codes, and a rupee-conversion column. One wrong field causes problems later.
Foreign income secretly counts toward the ₹20 lakh limit — people cross it without realising and get caught out.
Receiving foreign money in a personal account gets it flagged and frozen. Few know they need a current account + correct code.
Even at 0% tax you must still file returns — pulling together a year of scattered invoices and documents by hand.
This is the key insight. Regular Indian customers resist paying for software. But these people earn in foreign currency, so they pay like their Western peers — and they have the exact same problem the West does.
Setulfo is a co-pilot, not a pilot.
It sits on top of the tools people already use (Wise, Payoneer, their bank). AI reads your documents, drafts your invoices, and explains things plainly, while a strict rules-engine handles the exact legal math. It tracks every deadline and hands over a ready-to-file packet. The human still steers the big decisions — Setulfo does the endless busywork around them.
A friendly AI chat asks a few plain questions to understand your setup; the rules-engine then decides if you must register for GST and notes your LUT status.
✨ AI + rulesTell Setulfo "bill Acme $1,500 for the logo redesign" and it drafts a fully compliant export invoice — correct wording, SAC code, and rupee-conversion column included.
✨ AI + rulesMoney lands via Wise, Payoneer, or direct bank transfer — exactly the way it already does today. Setulfo never touches it.
External railDrop in the bank/Wise/Payoneer PDF. AI reads it, pulls out amount, date, and sender, and matches it to the right invoice automatically.
✨ AILUT renewal, the FIRA realization window, GST filing dates — all tracked silently, with reminders before anything is at risk.
SetulfoOne screen shows what's Done, Due, and At-risk — and a filing-ready packet waits whenever it's time to hand off to your CA.
You / your CAShe finishes a $1,500 logo project. Googles "how to invoice foreign client," copies a template, gets the tax wording wrong. Forgets to download her FIRA. In April, she misses her LUT renewal — and learns in December she now owes 18% on the whole year. Spends a frantic weekend and ₹8,000 on a CA to clean it up.
She clicks "new invoice" — it's correct instantly. After the client pays via Wise, Setulfo pings: "grab your FIRA," and files it automatically. In March it reminds her to renew the LUT. At tax time, one tidy packet is waiting. Total effort: a few clicks a month. Total panic: zero.
AI is the friendly translator at the front — it understands messy input and speaks plainly. A strict rules-engine sits at the back and does the tax math the same correct way every time. The user feels a smart assistant; the risky parts run on boring, auditable rules.
These limits aren't weaknesses — they keep us out of heavy regulation, let a small team move fast, and are exactly why big payment companies can't easily copy us.
Remote work made "Indian talent, foreign client" normal — the customer base is large and growing fast.
Wise, Payoneer, Skydo solved getting paid. Nobody solved the compliance layer sitting on top of them.
A tiny team can build and run this affordably — the paperwork itself is perfect for automation.
There are players here — we're not claiming empty space. But each is tied to one lane, and the gap between them is real.
Skydo, Karbon, Xflow, Wise. Auto-FIRA + invoices — but only for money passing through their own account. Use two rails and neither sees the full picture.
Refrens, Zoho, GimBooks. Generic GST invoicing & filing reports. No LUT tracking, no FIRA-realization tracking, not built for the export workflow.
Does the judgment, hates the busywork. Not a rival — a sales channel that brings us clients in batches.
We'd rather name these than pretend they don't exist. Each has a real strategy behind it.
Risk: rails bundle FIRA/invoicing free (they earn on FX). Answer: we charge for the cross-rail compliance brain they can't offer — value that stands on its own, priced on peace-of-mind.
Risk: a payment rail adds LUT tracking themselves. Answer: they only see their own rail. Our whole point is the freelancer who uses several — structurally hard for a single rail to serve.
Risk: maybe this belongs inside a payment app. Answer: exactly what validation must prove — will people pay for it separately? We test before we build.
Anyone can build a form. Very few will deeply learn India's export-of-services rules, encode them correctly, and keep them updated as laws change. That hard-won knowledge — plus the trust that comes from getting it right — is the wall.
Win Indian freelancers narrowly and completely before expanding. Same product structure then extends to agencies, then to US/UK freelancers — one wedge, then widen.
Setulfo does the boring 95% automatically. But sometimes a freelancer hits a moment that really needs a real accountant — registering for GST the first time, an audit, a scary notice. Right now they just Google "CA near me" and hope for the best. Setulfo Connect gives them a trusted CA instead of a random gamble — and it's good for everyone involved.
No more picking a random CA off Google and hoping. They get matched with someone who already knows this exact problem — foreign clients, FIRA, LUT, export GST.
A steady flow of new clients who already have their paperwork organised (thanks to Setulfo) — so less back-and-forth and an easier start than a client they find cold.
A second way to make money that doesn't rely only on people paying a monthly fee — and it makes CAs even more likely to recommend us to their other clients.
A real moment — first GST registration, a notice, an audit. Not a random pop-up trying to upsell you.
SetulfoSetulfo tells you plainly what happens next — including that it may earn a small fee from this — before connecting you to anyone.
You chooseFrom a small handful of CAs we've personally checked and trust — not an open list of random names.
SetulfoSetulfo hands them your paperwork already sorted and organised, so they can start working right away instead of asking you to dig everything up.
CAIf you become their client, the CA pays Setulfo a small fixed fee for the introduction. It never comes out of your money, and you're told about it beforehand.
Setulfo ↔ CAWe looked into the rules CAs have to follow before deciding on this. The short version: a CA is allowed to pay someone for sending them a client, as long as it's told to the client openly. But CAs are told to stay away from anything shaped like "pay us a % of whatever you earn from this client" — that gets too close to rules they're not allowed to break. So we picked the simpler, safer option instead.
We are currently in active development, building out the platform while gathering direct feedback from freelancers. Rather than shipping assumptions, we are refining each phase to ensure it solves the exact compliance headaches you face.
Building the end-to-end freelancer and CA integration flow to keep compliance handoffs smooth and error-free.
Onboarding a curated group of verified CAs specializing in export of services and foreign remittance compliance.
Rolling out smart matching and automated document handoffs directly within the Setulfo dashboard.
Indians resist flat fees for "convenience" but happily pay when software removes fear or is tied to money and deadlines. So we price around outcomes, not vibes.
Correct invoices + basic reminders. Gets people in the door.
The full co-pilot: FIRA matching, LUT tracking, filing-ready packets, dashboard.
Sell to CAs & agencies managing many freelancers — per-client pricing.
Talk to freelancers, confirm the pain, build the smallest tool for the #1 problem.
AI document-reading + invoices + LUT/deadlines + filing packet for Indian freelancers.
Multi-client dashboard, plus Setulfo Connect — the referral layer connecting freelancers to vetted CAs.
Same engine, new rule-sets: US (1099s), UK (VAT). India was the beachhead.
Indians who earn in dollars have a real, recurring, scary problem — and a real budget. Setulfo is the co-pilot that handles the boring, high-stakes paperwork automatically, without touching their money or replacing their accountant. India first, the world next.
Auto-generated export invoices, LUT deadline reminders, FIRA in one place, and GST-return-ready numbers. Works with Wise, Payoneer & your bank.
This is a validation page, not a live product yet. No spam — just used to confirm real demand before we build.