How to Play Business: India

Business: India is a property-trading board game for 2 to 4 players, played out across a ring of Indian cities, railways, and utilities. Buy what you land on, build up complete colour groups, and squeeze rent from anyone unlucky enough to land on your streets — the last player still solvent wins. This guide walks through setup, a full turn, and every special rule exactly as our game plays it.

Overview & Goal

Players roll dice and move a token clockwise around a 40-space board, buying the streets, railways, and utilities they land on. Once you own every property in a colour group, you can build Shops and eventually a Mall to multiply the rent your opponents pay you. Cash flows constantly — salary for passing the start square, rent between players, taxes, and windfalls from two card decks — and a player who cannot pay a debt, even after selling everything they own, goes bankrupt and is out. In the standard game, play continues until only one solvent player remains. There’s also a faster Short Game that ends on a clock and is won by whoever has built the highest net worth.

Components

• The board — a 40-space ring including four corners (Start, Lock-Up, Rest House, and a Raid square that sends you straight to Lock-Up), 22 city streets across eight colour groups, four railways, two utilities, two tax spaces, and six card spaces.
• Player tokens — eight themed pieces, including an auto-rickshaw, a chai glass, a tiffin box, a cricket bat, an elephant, a peacock, an oil lamp, and a vintage taxi. Pick any distinct token for 2 to 4 players.
• Two dice, plus an optional third “Hustle Die” (see Variants).
• 28 property cards — one per street, railway, and utility, showing price, rent, and mortgage value.
• Two 16-card decks — KISMAT (fate) and KHAZANA (treasure) — drawn whenever you land on their spaces.
• Shops and Malls — 32 Shop tokens and 12 Mall tokens, built on completed colour groups to raise rent.
• Cash, tracked as a single running balance in rupees (₹) rather than individual notes.

Setup

Every player starts with ₹15,000 and a token on the Start square. All 28 properties begin unowned, and the full Shop and Mall supply sits untouched with the bank. Both card decks are shuffled separately. Everyone rolls once to determine turn order — highest total goes first — and play proceeds clockwise from there. Before the first turn, the host can toggle a handful of optional rules: Auctions, Trading, a Rest House jackpot, the Hustle Die, and the Short Game clock. By default, Auctions, Trading, and the jackpot are switched on, and the other two are off.

A Turn, Step by Step

1. Roll and move. Roll both dice and move your token clockwise that many spaces. If you pass or land on the Start square, collect ₹2,000 salary. Rolling doubles lets you roll again once you finish resolving this move — but roll three doubles in the same turn and you go directly to Lock-Up instead of moving a third time.
2. Resolve the space you land on. This is the heart of the turn:
   • Unowned property — buy it at the printed price, or decline and let it go to auction.
   • Someone else’s unmortgaged property — pay them rent automatically.
   • A KISMAT or KHAZANA space — draw the top card of that deck and follow its instruction immediately. A card that moves you triggers a fresh landing resolution at your new space.
   • A tax space — pay the bank, or the jackpot if that variant is switched on.
   • Rest House, Lock-Up (just passing), or a property you already own — nothing happens, beyond collecting the jackpot if you land exactly on the Rest House.
3. Manage your position. Before and after your roll, you can propose trades, mortgage or unmortgage properties, and build or sell Shops and Malls on any colour group you fully own.
4. End your turn — unless you rolled doubles, in which case you roll again.

Worked example: you roll a 6 and land on an unowned street costing ₹1,800. You buy it, bringing your holdings in that colour group to two of three streets. Two turns later you land on the third street in the group and buy that too — the instant you own the whole group, the rent anyone pays you there doubles, even before you’ve built a single Shop.

Special Rules & Edge Cases

• Lock-Up. You get sent there by landing on the Raid square, drawing certain cards, or rolling three doubles in one turn. While locked up you can still collect rent, trade, and build — you just can’t move. Each turn you may pay ₹500 bail, play a Bail Card, or try to roll doubles to break out; on your third stuck turn, you’re forced to pay bail and move with whatever you rolled.
• Even building. You can’t stack a second Shop on one street in a group until every street in that group already has one, and so on up to four Shops. A Mall replaces four Shops on a single street and needs the same even progress across the whole group.
• Mortgaging. You can mortgage any property with no buildings on it for its mortgage value, but a mortgaged property earns no rent, and you must sell every building on a colour group before mortgaging any street inside it. Lifting a mortgage costs the mortgage value plus 10% interest.
• Auctions. If a player declines to buy — or can’t afford — a property they land on, it goes to open bidding among everyone at the table, starting from a low minimum bid. Even the player who declined can win it cheaply.
• Trading. Cash, unbuilt properties, and Bail Cards can be traded freely between any two players; Shops and Malls themselves can never be traded and must be sold back to the bank first.

How the Game Ends & Scoring

There’s no points total during play — your standing is simply your cash plus the value of everything you own. In the standard game, play ends the moment only one player is left solvent; everyone else has gone bankrupt along the way, and that survivor wins outright. In the Short Game, play stops at a chosen time or round limit, and the win goes to whoever has the highest net worth — cash plus property and building values — with ties broken first by cash on hand, then by completed colour groups, then by total buildings owned.

Variants / House Rules

• Auctions (on by default) — declined properties go to bidding instead of sitting unsold with the bank.
• Trading (on by default) — players can freely trade cash, unbuilt properties, and Bail Cards.
• Rest House Jackpot (on by default) — taxes, bail payments, and certain card penalties feed a central pot instead of going straight to the bank; land exactly on the Rest House to claim the whole pot.
• Hustle Die (off by default) — a third die adds extra movement options, an occasional free bonus action, or lets you jump anywhere on the board when all three dice match.
• Short Game (off by default) — ends on a clock instead of playing to the last solvent player, with the highest net worth winning.

Quick-Reference Summary

• 2–4 players, ₹15,000 starting cash each, board of 40 spaces.
• Roll, move clockwise, resolve your space — buy, pay rent, draw a card, or pay tax.
• Own every street in a colour group to double base rent, then build Shops and a Mall to multiply it further.
• Doubles earn another roll; three doubles in a turn sends you to Lock-Up instead.
• Bankruptcy — unable to pay even after liquidating everything — eliminates a player.
• The standard game ends when one solvent player remains; the Short Game ends on a clock and rewards the highest net worth.