I think even just Skype and technologies like that really positively impacted it and has helped (logmein, gotomeeting too).

Depending on what you are trying to do there could be lots of good/bad. If you are thinking of renting space out and hiring 10 people over there and sticking them in an office and they are solely your team then you have a greater chance of success. But you are going to have to learn to do business in India, learn their rules, learn how to get what you need there etc. That means how to hire, fire, discipline, manage and deal with local authorities. If you think it is hard doing that as a startup in the states, try doing it in two countries at once. Oh, and you will need to be there every few months in person to make sure you are getting what you want, price that airplane ticket * 4-6 times a year. :) I have been asked a lot why I feel face time is so important with remote teams like India, Brazil etc. Frankly the #1 reason is our cultures are different, so interpreting the nuances of spoken phrases or the unspoken is much harder unless you spend time with them. This is by no means bashing anyone, but it is a reality, you need to learn their culture and respect the differences so you can work with them successfully.

If you are thinking of trying to let them work remote out of their house, I have not had 1 good experience trying that as many will sell their time to 3-4 companies this way and do a mediocre job at best and generally a horrible job. This is the numbers game I was referencing, you might luck out, but more than likely you will hit the game of numbers constantly cycling through people.

And if you are thinking to use a dev shop over there, that has its own problems. Most specifically is you rarely will speak to the guy writing the code. They insulate the teams so much that the guy sitting in front of a keyboard has had 3-4 layers of filtering done. Not saying this is true for every place, as I know there are some that are not that way. But in general I saw a lot of this going on.

And even if you go to some of the smaller shops that promise the opposite, then you get the issue of the 11+ hour time difference and the fact that your communication and documentation will need to be excellent to get good results out of them.

My whole team today is basically remote, we work in different cities etc and that works because of technologies like IM, Skype, Hangouts etc. But we are all in the US and all have similar education, understandings and backgrounds. And the team is motivated to produce high quality because it is their name/reputation on the product too. Of course they are also not paid a 3rd world wage either which helps. And even with all that, we still have to get together, hash through things and solve problems in the same room sometimes. So far no technology I have ever seen will replace sitting in a room with 4-5 smart people and a white board. Even when I worked with Indian firms for some of the larger projects I was on, I flew there regularly to meet with the team we hired over there. And we did have video conferencing already. It is really hard to get people that are 8k miles away to have the same level of passion about your project as you do unless you show up regularly to get them involved.

I am not bashing remote work out of India or any other Country, it is just that the problem is hard to solve, and for a startup it is a very tough problem unless you already know people in the Country you want to work with. If you look at Oracle, Microsoft, GE etc, all have dev shops in India and other places. And every one of them has US based personnel that directly are in Country or make regular visits there to manage the shops. They also have significant budgets and staff to write super detailed specs etc. And frankly, if you have seen their dev timelines, it shows.