Opening a Serbian Company as an Indian Citizen

What you can do from India, and what needs someone in Serbia

Foreign individuals and foreign companies register a Serbian business on the same terms as local founders, with up to 100% ownership. Residence and citizenship are not required to own the company, which is exactly why your company and your immigration status have to be planned as two separate questions.

We prepare the electronic APR filing under a special power of attorney notarised in India and, where required, apostilled. The setup is not fully remote: the founder comes to Serbia for a physical KES/QES and bank identification, and we do not offer cloud KES. Biro Vision's formation fee is €500; official and third-party costs are separate. Company formation sets out the sequence.

The bank appointment is usually what decides whether you fly. Each bank applies its own identification and client-checking rules, so confirm before you plan anything whether your director has to attend in person at that specific bank.

• The founder's passport and the director's details.
• A registered address in Serbia.
• The founding act and the registration application.
• A special power of attorney if you are not signing in Belgrade yourself.
• If the founder is an Indian company: a register extract and the constitutive documents, apostilled and translated by a court interpreter.

A company is not a residence permit

Serbia's official temporary residence page lists the bases for temporary residence: employment, education, investor, Serbian origin, start-up, talent, property owner, family reunification, independent stay, religious service, and medical treatment or care. There is no separate 'company owner' basis on that list. Self-employment appears underneath the employment basis, in the group handled through the combined residence and work permit.

Investor and start-up are on the list as distinct labels with their own meaning. The official page does not define them, so do not assume that owning a Serbian company puts you inside either one.

The practical reading is unglamorous and worth taking seriously. The company gives a self-employment application something real to stand on. It is not the application, it is not the permit, and a company registered with no intention of trading is not a shortcut to either. If you are researching this because you want a job in Serbia, the wider picture for founders will tell you honestly that this is the wrong route.

Your Schengen, UK, EU or US visa: what it covers

Holders of a valid Schengen, UK or EU Member State visa, or a visa of the United States, may enter, transit and stay in Serbia for up to 90 days in any 180-day period without applying for a Serbian visa first, and only within the validity of that visa. For an Indian founder this is genuinely useful: a scouting trip, a notary appointment, a meeting at the bank.

Two limits get lost when people paraphrase this. The stay cannot outlast the underlying visa's own expiry, and the allowance is 90 days in any 180-day period, not 90 days per entry.

For residence permits rather than visas the carve-out is narrower. It covers residence permits issued by Schengen countries, EU Member States or the United States, and the United Kingdom appears on the visa side only. If you live in the UK on a Biometric Residence Permit and hold no qualifying visa, do not assume you are covered.

The carve-out is written as an entry and short-stay rule. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that a short-stay visa is not grounds to apply for temporary residence unless the Law provides otherwise, and that a foreign national who needs a visa and intends to apply for temporary residence must obtain a long-stay visa. The official pages do not address what happens if you enter under the third-country carve-out and then try to apply from inside Serbia, so plan on the D visa and confirm anything else with the Embassy in New Delhi before you commit to travel.

The D visa on an employment basis

The India visa regime page states that visas are required for holders of ordinary passports and other travel documents. If you have seen a visa free allowance quoted for India, check which passport class the line covers before you rely on it, because the requirement for an ordinary passport is stated flatly.

Serbia's single-permit guidance states that a foreign citizen who needs a visa to enter Serbia applies for a Visa D on the grounds of employment, and the temporary residence page puts self-employment under that same employment basis. A D visa allows a stay of minimum 90 and maximum 180 days and allows multiple entries. On an employment basis the official guidance goes further: the D visa serves as a work permit, and the holder can begin working immediately on arrival.

An application can be made through the online form on the government portal or in person at a diplomatic-consular mission, and each person entered in a passport files a separate application. You apply at the mission competent for your country of residence, or at a non-residential mission if there is none in your country. The Embassy of Serbia in New Delhi is resident in India, so for an applicant living in India there is a mission in the country. Its own page states diplomatic jurisdiction rather than a visa-application rule, so confirm submission arrangements and appointment practice with the embassy itself.

No processing time is published. Neither the D visa page nor the employment sub-page states how long a decision takes. Do not book non-refundable flights, sign a Belgrade lease or resign from a job in India around an assumed date, and treat any agency that quotes you a firm timeline as guessing.

The D visa employment page splits employment into ten sub-grounds, each with its own document set. Five items recur across all of them.

• A completed visa application form, in the online application or printed if you apply at a mission.
• A valid passport, with validity running at least 90 days beyond your intended departure date.
• A photograph of the applicant.
• Proof that the application fee was paid.
• An invitation letter.
• For the self-employment sub-ground the page additionally names the Serbian registration certificate, an authorisation or power of attorney, and a landlord or accommodation statement.
• These are category labels, and the sub-ground you fall under changes the list materially. Check each item against the live official page before you collect anything: it does not state whether documents need translation, apostille or notarisation, and it does not give the fee amount.

From the D visa to residence and the single permit

The single permit is one permit covering both residence and work. The official page uses 'single work and residence permit', 'single residence and work permit' and the short 'single permit' interchangeably, so do not treat any one of those as a formal name that must appear on your paperwork. How the self-employment single permit works goes through it in detail.

A properly completed request is resolved within 15 days from the date it is submitted. Read the qualifier: the clock is tied to a properly completed request, so 15 days is not a promise about the total elapsed time from your first attempt.

Temporary residence or a single permit can be issued for up to three years per request. Three years is the maximum, not the normal grant, and the official pages give no criteria for who receives the full period. An extension is filed no earlier than three months before expiry and no later than the expiry date, and filing on time lets you remain in Serbia while the procedure runs.

One step cannot be done from India. Once the conditions for issuing the permit are met, the applicant must appear in person at the competent authority so biometric data can be collected. That is stated on the temporary residence page.

Plan on continuing on the same basis your D visa was issued on. If you need to change basis, confirm with the Ministry of Interior first, because the official portal is not consistent on this point: the temporary residence page says a person on a D visa may request temporary residence only on the same basis, while the D visa page says you can apply on the same grounds. We are not going to pick a side for you on a question the state has not settled.

The business account

We prepare the company documentation and coordinate the appointment. The bank decides. Serbia's official guidance on accounts for non-residents states that a bank freely chooses its clients and independently decides whether to enter a business relationship, under its own business policy and internal acts that must include risk management measures. That passage sits on the page about accounts for natural persons rather than on the business-account page, so read it as the posture Serbian banks operate under rather than as a rule quoted at company accounts.

The same page states two limits that matter to an Indian applicant. Banks may not rely on discriminatory grounds such as citizenship, gender or religion, and on the client's written request they must state in writing the reasons for refusing a business relationship. If you are refused, ask for that in writing.

After registering the company you open a business account at a bank. The official page gives the set you will most often need: the registration decision, the TIN certificate, a notary-certified OP form, the card of deposited signatures and a signed contract. It hedges that list on purpose, and the OP form in particular depends from bank to bank, so check the chosen bank's own website for its documentation before you go in. You do not need a company stamp to open an account, and the page adds that a bank demanding one can be reported to the Government or National Bank contact centre.

There is no official statement in either direction on remote company-account opening. Our workflow requires the foreign director to attend identification in Serbia; the bank then performs its checks and independently decides on the account. What a foreign owner should expect at the bank is written as preparation rather than a promise.

What it costs, in dinars and euros

The APR fee is 8,000 dinars, around 68 euros, to register a d.o.o., and 2,500 dinars for a sole trader. The minimum share capital for a d.o.o. is 100 dinars and does not have to be paid in on the day of registration. The full cost breakdown covers what sits on top of the state fee.

Budget separately for notary certification, court-interpreter translation and apostilles on your Indian documents. Those are third-party costs, they depend on how many documents you have, and we write them down before you pay anything.

Then there is the running cost, which starts the moment the company exists. Monthly bookkeeping starts at 6,900 RSD a month for a flat-rate sole trader and 18,500 RSD a month for a company, and the final figure depends on document volume, headcount, VAT status and activity.

Two Serbian thresholds are worth knowing before you choose a form. Flat-rate tax is available up to 6,000,000 dinars of turnover in a calendar year, and you enter the VAT system once taxable turnover over the preceding 12 months passes 8,000,000 dinars. They are separate thresholds and people routinely confuse them.

What we do, and what we do not do

Biro Vision is an accounting firm in Belgrade. We provide administrative support: company registration and APR filings, document coordination, translation and legalisation, application preparation and submission support, and the bookkeeping, payroll and compliance that follow registration.

We are not lawyers. We do not provide legal advice or legal representation, we do not appear for you in any procedure, and we do not decide visas, permits or bank accounts. If your case needs a licensed lawyer, we will say so and step aside.

We publish no approval rates, no client counts and no testimonials, because we cannot evidence them and you should not buy on them. What we can put in writing before you pay is the scope, the exclusions and the third-party fees.