Company data
Looking up an Indian director (DIN)
Director names are not in the open dataset behind Adullam Tools. This is the route to look them up yourself on the government portal instead, drawn out step by step, including exactly where the free path stops and the paid one begins.
Why this page exists
Adullam Tools company search runs on the open dataset the Indian government publishes. That dataset carries 16 master-data fields per company, and directors are not among them. A paid commercial API would let us show them; we do not have one, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
So we did the next honest thing and wrote down how to look them up. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) genuinely does offer free director lookups, and most people arriving here do not know those services exist.
The illustrations here are schematics rather than screenshots. MCA rebuilt the portal as V3 and moved a great deal; guides that photographed the old screens still rank in search and now describe pages that no longer exist. A drawing that imitates a real screen becomes a lie at the next restyle. A diagram of which box you type into and what comes back survives it.
Look up an Indian company or LLP by name, CIN or LLPIN.
Back to company searchWhat a DIN is
Start from a corporate-register mindset and the first assumption is already wrong. A DIN attaches to a person, not to a company.
- Belongs to a person, not to a company
- One number across every board, and it survives resignation
- A DPIN for an LLP designated partner is the same series
For contrast: a CIN is 21 characters and belongs to a company
A DIN, or Director Identification Number, is an eight-digit number allotted to a natural person who wants to serve as a director of an Indian company. It comes from sections 153 and 154 of the Companies Act, 2013, and section 152(3) states plainly that nobody can be appointed a director without one. It is applied for on Form DIR-3, or inside the SPICe+ incorporation application when the company is new.
The important part is that the number follows the person. Section 155 forbids anyone from holding more than one DIN. Joining a second board does not produce a second number, and stepping down does not retire the one you have. That is why the lookups are built the way they are: you identify a person and check their number, rather than pulling a list of people out of a company number.
Designated partners of an LLP get a DPIN. In practice MCA treats the two as a single series, and the portal's own input fields and result columns are labelled DIN/DPIN. There is no separate screen to hunt for when the entity is an LLP.
A DIN is not something you get once and forget. Form DIR-3 KYC is due by 30 September each financial year, and missing it flips the status to 'Deactivated due to non-filing of DIR-3 KYC'. Reactivating costs a fee of ₹5,000. A deactivated DIN cannot sign filings, so if a director is out of the country when the deadline passes, the entity's annual filings stall behind it. The free lookup below shows exactly that status field, which makes it a one-field health check worth running each October.
- Format
- 8 digits
- The portal's own input field is capped at eight characters. Letters are not accepted.
- Statutory basis
- Companies Act ss.152(3), 153, 154, 155
- Applied for on Form DIR-3, or within SPICe+ at incorporation.
- Annual obligation
- DIR-3 KYC, due 30 September
- No fee if it is filed by the due date.
- If it is missed
- DIN deactivated, ₹5,000 to restore
- The status reads 'Deactivated due to non-filing of DIR-3 KYC'.
Why there are no directors on this site
Not because the data does not exist. Because the copy of it that gets published does not include them. Same registry, different pipe.
Director information genuinely sits in the registry. Appointments and resignations are filed on Form DIR-12, and each individual's identity is refreshed every year through DIR-3 KYC. The question is which pipe that information comes out of.
What MCA releases as open data is 16 master-data fields per company: name, CIN, incorporation date, registered address, capital, status, industrial classification and so on. Directors are not on that list. To see them you either query the portal one entity at a time, pay MCA to inspect the filed documents, or contract with a commercial data provider.
Adullam Tools uses only the first pipe. That is why the director row on a company detail page is empty and links here instead. It also happens to be the right call on privacy grounds: director filings carry residential addresses, and we decided not to mirror personal data of that kind.
Which route depends on what you already have
There are three free entry points, and the one you take is decided by whichever identifier is already in your hand.
None of the three asks you to log in and none charges a fee. All three put a captcha in front of every query, which is deliberate: it is there to stop automated collection. If you have dozens of entities to check, the free route is not a realistic plan.
A fourth screen answers a different question
MCA Services > Master Data > View Companies/Directors Under Prosecution takes the same inputs as the three screens above, but returns something else — only companies and directors under prosecution. No login, no fee.
An empty result means the person is not on this list, not that no such director exists. It cannot be used as a general lookup.
Route 1 — from a number to a person
For when you already have the DIN. This is how you check that the number written on a signature block or a board resolution is real and current.
- mca.gov.in
- MCA Services
- FO Services
- Enquire DIN Status
- DIN
- The number you entered, echoed back. Enter one that does not exist and you get an error message instead of a result panel.
- Director Name
- The name registered against that DIN. Any mismatch with the spelling on your paperwork shows up right here, which matters more than it sounds: Indian names are transliterated inconsistently and this is where the discrepancy usually surfaces.
- DIN Status
- The field that carries the most weight. It tells you whether the DIN is approved, deactivated for a missed DIR-3 KYC, surrendered or lapsed.
- If Director of ACTIVE non-compliant company
- Flags that the person sits on the board of an entity marked 'ACTIVE non-compliant'. That marking comes from the company failing to file Form INC-22A (e-Form ACTIVE); it reflects the company's filing state, not anything the individual did.
- Date of Approval
- Shown when the DIN is active. This is the date the number was allotted, not the date of any appointment. The two are different dates and are frequently confused.
- Disqualification Period From
- The start date if a disqualification is recorded. Disqualification under section 164 typically runs five years, during which the person cannot be appointed to a new board.
- Disqualification Period To
- The end date of that period. Both fields empty means no disqualification is on record.
There is nothing to register for and nothing to pay. You only have to clear the captcha.
It does not tell you which companies the person is a director of. The direction from number to companies does not exist on the free route. You can go from a company to its people, but not the other way.
Route 2 — from a company to its people
This is the screen that lists an entity's signatories. Company search and director search live on the same page, split by a radio button.
- mca.gov.in
- MCA Services
- Master Data
- Master Data Services
Columns in the result list
Company search
- S.No.
- Company/LLP name
- CIN/FCRN/LLPIN/FLLPIN
- State
- Status
Director search
- S.No.
- Name
- DIN/DPIN
Choosing an entity takes you through to its master data together with the list of signatories associated with it.
The roles that appear in the list
The portal does not show everyone on file. It filters to a fixed set of designations, and the set depends on what kind of entity you opened.
- Indian company
- Director
- Managing Director
- Whole-time director
- Additional Director
- Alternate Director
- Nominee Director
- Director appointed in casual vacancy
- CEO
- CFO
- Manager
- Company Secretary
- Indian LLP
- Designated Partner
- Nominee for Body corporate designated partner
- Foreign company or foreign LLP
- Authorised Representative
Note that CEO, CFO, Manager and Company Secretary appear alongside the directors. Indian company law groups them as key managerial personnel and requires them on the register too. A foreign company's Indian establishment, by contrast, shows only an Authorised Representative and no directors at all.
No shareholding and no beneficial ownership. How resigned individuals are marked, and whether appointment or cessation dates are shown, is something to check on the screen itself. We did not clear the captcha to open a live result, so we are not going to assert it.
Route 3 — confirming a PAN you already hold
This service does not hand you a number. It compares one you already have against the register and answers yes or no.
- mca.gov.in
- MCA Services
- FO Services
- Verify DIN PAN Details of Director
Enter a DIN and it returns the registered name. Add the PAN along with a date of birth and father's name, and it tells you only whether those details match the DIN database. The answer is a match or no-match; the PAN itself is never revealed.
The screen states that the service applies to Indian directors only, so it is of no use for a director posted in from abroad. Its practical use is narrow: confirming the identity of a counterparty's signatory when you have been given their details.
What the free route gives you, and what it does not
If the plan is to complete a due-diligence check without paying anything, read this table before committing to it.
Available free on the portal
- Whether a DIN exists, and what its current status is
- The name registered against it
- The date the DIN was approved
- The disqualification period, if one is recorded
- Whether the person is on the board of an 'ACTIVE non-compliant' entity
- The signatory list and designations for a named company
- Finding a DIN from a person's name
- Whether a PAN you already hold matches the DIN record (Indian directors only)
Not available free on the portal
- Every company a given person is a director of
- Shareholding or beneficial ownership
- Financial statements, charges or litigation
- Appointment and cessation history as a dated record
- A downloadable file or an API
- Bulk lookups, since a captcha stands in front of every query
When you have to pay
Once the free route clearly will not get you there, there are two options: pay the government directly, or buy from a data provider.
Official paid services
- View Public Documentsopens in a new tab
https://www.mca.gov.in/content/mca/global/en/mca/document-related-services/view-public-documents-v3/view-public-documents.html
Inspect the documents the entity actually filed, including the DIR-12 appointment and resignation filings and the annual returns. If you need director history down to the dates, this is where you end up.
Requires a login and a payment. We did not log in, so we are not quoting a figure. Check the amount at checkout.
- Get Certified Copiesopens in a new tab
https://www.mca.gov.in/content/mca/global/en/mca/document-related-services/get-certified-copies-v3.html
For when inspection is not enough and you need a certified copy to produce as evidence, such as for a bank, a court, or a group audit that needs an authenticated document.
Requires a login and a payment. Check the amount at checkout.
Commercial data providers
Several companies take MCA data and resell it with search, history and an API on top. If you need to trace a person's directorships across entities, or process hundreds of records, that is realistically the only way to do it.
We are not naming any of them. Pricing and coverage change often, and a listing here would be worth money to the vendor and nothing at all to you. What we can usefully offer instead is the list of things to pin down before you sign.
- Ask for an as-of date per record rather than accepting the word 'live'. Most of these are periodic loads of the MCA release.
- Check whether the director history carries cessation dates. Plenty of products only ever show the current list.
- Be explicit about whether you are buying one-off reports or an API contract. The unit economics are completely different.
- Read the licence on redistribution, loading into your own systems, and publishing externally.
What we checked, and when
A guide with wrong steps is worse than no guide. So here is what was verified, how, and where we stopped.
- Verified
- 2026-09-02
- Checked against
- mca.gov.in itself, not secondary write-ups
Confirmed directly
- The menu structure under MCA Services: Master Data, FO Services and Document Related Services
- That Enquire DIN Status takes a single DIN input, capped at eight characters
- That the result carries the seven items listed above
- That Master Data Services splits into a company search and a director search
- The result-list column names, and the set of designations the listing filters to
- The on-screen statement that Verify DIN PAN Details of Director applies to Indian directors only
- That View Public Documents and Get Certified Copies both ask for a login and a payment
Not confirmed
- We did not run a search through to a result. All three screens sit behind a captcha and we do not work around those. The post-submit layout described here is read from the page structure the portal serves, not from a completed query.
- The inspection fee for View Public Documents is only shown after logging in, so no amount is quoted.
- How a resigned individual is labelled in the signatory list needs a live result to confirm.
MCA restructured its registrar offices with effect from 16 February 2026. Delhi was split into Delhi I, Delhi II and a separate Haryana office; Kanpur into Uttar Pradesh I and II; Mumbai into Mumbai I, Mumbai II and Nagpur; Kolkata into Kolkata I and II. Every foreign company with a place of business in India was mapped to Delhi I. If the ROC list in the advanced search looks unfamiliar, that is why, and older guides still describe the previous arrangement.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. On the MCA portal go to MCA Services > Master Data > Master Data Services, search by company name or CIN, and open the entity to see the signatories associated with it. There is no login and no fee, only a captcha on each query. It works one company at a time, and it does not show shareholding or financial statements.
Eight digits, with no letters. The DIN field on the MCA portal is itself capped at eight characters. It is easy to confuse with a CIN, which is 21 characters; the difference that matters is that a CIN identifies a company and a DIN identifies a person.
Neither. Enquire DIN Status opens without logging in and charges nothing. The only friction is entering a captcha each time. Login and payment start at View Public Documents, which is where you open the filed documents themselves.
Because the MCA open dataset we use does not contain them. What is published openly is 16 company master-data fields; director lists come from a paid commercial API. We have not contracted for one, so rather than implying we have the data, this page explains how to look it up at the source.
Filing the missed DIR-3 KYC together with a ₹5,000 fee restores it. Depending on the case it may have to go through the e-Form rather than the web version, so check with the company's Indian chartered accountant or company secretary. Until it is restored, that person cannot sign filings, which usually means the annual filings are held up behind it.
Not on the free route. Enquire DIN Status goes from a number to that person's status, never to a list of companies. Master Data Services needs a company before it will show you people. Tracing directorships from the person outwards requires MCA's paid document inspection or a commercial data provider.
The number allotted to an LLP designated partner is called a DPIN, but MCA treats the two as one series. The portal's own input fields and result columns are labelled DIN/DPIN, so there is no separate screen to find when the entity is an LLP.
There is no menu item by that name on the V3 portal. As of 2 September 2026 it appears neither in the MCA Services menu nor in the site's own sitemap. Signatory information moved inside Master Data Services. Guides that use that name are describing the previous portal, V2.
This page records what was verified on the official MCA portal on 2 September 2026 and is offered for reference only; it is not tax or legal advice. Government portal menus and service scope can change without notice. Before acting on anything a lookup returns, have it confirmed by an Indian chartered accountant or company secretary.