Indian company search

Every Indian company is registered with a state-level Registrar of Companies under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA). Incorporation, changes of directors, amendments to the constitution, annual returns and financial statements all flow through that office. Unlike systems where the corporate register sits with the courts, as it does in Korea, India keeps registration and company-law supervision under one roof.

The MCA publishes part of that register as open data. Adullam Tools uses the Registrars of Companies (RoC)-wise Company Master Data release on data.gov.in, which covers roughly 3.6 million companies across 16 fields — name, CIN, incorporation date, class, capital, registered address and status among them.

A CIN (Corporate Identity Number) is the 21-character identifier assigned to an Indian company. It plays the role of a corporate registration number, with one important difference: where some registries issue what is effectively a serial (Korea's corporate registration number is one), every position of a CIN carries meaning.

The first character records listing status (L or U). The next five are the NIC industry code (NIC 2004 or NIC 2008, depending on when the code was assigned), followed by the two-letter code of the state where the company is registered, the four-digit year of incorporation, a three-letter ownership code (PTC, PLC, OPC and so on) and finally a six-digit registration serial. From the CIN alone you can tell when a company was incorporated, and where and in what form it is registered today.

The catch is that a CIN can change. When a company lists or delists, converts between private and public, moves its registered office to another state, or alters its objects so that the registrar re-assigns its industry code, the MCA issues a new CIN, and the new industry code may follow NIC 2008. A company that changes what it actually does without amending its objects keeps the old code, so the code can be out of step with today's business. If the CIN on a counterparty's paperwork differs from the one shown here, check the current CIN on the official MCA portal.

The Private Limited Company dominates. It needs two to 200 shareholders and at least two directors, one of whom must be resident in India; share transfers are restricted by the articles and shares cannot be offered to the public. Indian subsidiaries of foreign groups are almost always set up in this form. Despite the name it is not a one-to-one match for similarly named forms elsewhere: it issues shares and has a board like a stock company, while share transfers are restricted as in a closely held company.

A Public Limited Company needs seven shareholders and three directors and has freely transferable shares. It is easy to confuse with a listed company, but the two are unrelated — India has a great many unlisted public limited companies. Disclosure, board composition and audit requirements are considerably heavier, so there is rarely a reason to choose this form for a new subsidiary.

The One Person Company was introduced by the Companies Act 2013. Only an individual who is an Indian citizen may form one (non-residents too since 2021), and a company cannot be its member, which rules it out for foreign parents. An LLP is a partnership rather than a company and receives an LLPIN instead of a CIN. About 15% of this dataset are LLPs; company-only fields such as class and capital do not apply to them and are blank.

Foreign businesses can also operate through a branch office, liaison office or project office. These are not separate companies but presences of the foreign parent, registered with the MCA as a foreign company. In this dataset they appear under a foreign company registration number (FCRN) beginning with F, such as F01234.

Company status describes the register, not the business. Active means the company has not been struck off; it does not mean it is trading or solvent. Companies can sit at Active for a while after missing several years of annual filings.

Struck off, by contrast, means the registrar has removed the company and its legal personality has ended. Even then matters are not necessarily closed: restoration by NCLT order under s.252 of the Companies Act does happen.

The practical rule is simple. Treat status as a first-pass filter, then pull current documents from the MCA portal or ask a chartered accountant before you transact. Adullam Tools is not a due diligence tool.

Authorized capital is the ceiling on shares the company may issue under its constitution. Paid-up capital is what shareholders have actually contributed. Judge size by the paid-up figure — companies with a large authorized capital and a token paid-up amount are common in India.

Indian amounts are grouped in lakh (100,000) and crore (10,000,000), and the digit grouping differs from Western convention: 12,34,567. Adullam Tools keeps the Indian grouping so you can reconcile against Indian paperwork, and shows a KRW or USD conversion alongside. Conversions are indicative and will not match a bank's transfer rate.