India Introduces e-B-4 Visa for Chinese Business Executives

• India launches e-B-4 Visa for Chinese business professionals for production and investment activities
• Allows up to six months’ stay for equipment commissioning, training, and senior management visits
• Applications via NSWS portal processed in 45–50 days to boost bilateral business ties

India has introduced a new e-Production Investment Business Visa called e-B-4 Visa to help travel arrangements for the Chinese business professionals who are working in production and investment related activities.

The new visa, which is applicable from the 1st of January, has allowed the applicants to process their application completely through the internet, thus doing away with the requirement of visiting the Indian Embassy or depending on the intermediaries.

The processing time for the e-B-4 Visa is generally between 45 to 50 days but it also gives the holders the right to reside in India for a maximum period of six months.

The visa is essentially aimed to cover a wide variety of business activities such as installation and commissioning of equipment, quality inspections, essential maintenance, production work, IT and ERP implementation, training programs, supply chain development, vendor registration, plant design, and visits by senior management and executives.

In order to extend the invitation to Chinese citizens under the aforementioned visa category, Indian companies need to first register themselves on the National Single Window System (NSWS) portal of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade.

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After completing the registration, the companies will be able to apply for the visa through the Bureau of Immigration’s e-visa platform by uploading the required documents.

The rollout of the e-B-4 Visa is in sync with the larger Indian and Chinese strategies to apply people-friendly policies which are deemed to be excellent paths toward the normalising of relations and even the gradual trust rebuilding.

Thus, gradually allowing the business travel, the new visa will soon become a great facilitator for Indian and Chinese companies’ collaboration, investment processes, and industrial and technological partnerships.

All in all, the e-B-4 Visa is a very important measure for a global trend of business interaction to be less impeded cross-border investment to be more attracted, and importantly to support the operational requirements of the multinational projects that involve the two countries. It is a sign of India's commitment to facilitating air travel for business purposes while keeping an eye on the situation through controls.