Business Registration Checklist (India): Licences You Need

About the Business Registration Checklist (India): Licences You Need

Starting a business in India means a handful of registrations, but which ones depends on what you do. Choose how the business is set up — a proprietorship, partnership, LLP, private limited company, OPC, section 8 company or trust — what it will do, the State and town, the expected turnover and how many people you will employ, and you get your own checklist: PAN and TAN, GST, Udyam, the State’s shops and establishments registration, profession tax, the trade licence, FSSAI for food, the IEC for imports and exports, the labour-code, EPF and ESI registrations, DPIIT start-up recognition and the trade mark.

Each item says whether it is mandatory for you and why, the official portal, the government fee where one is published, the documents to keep ready and its place in the usual order. GST and FSSAI are worked out with the same rules as this site’s GST registration checker and FSSAI licence checker. Tick items off as you go, then download the plan as a PDF, print it or copy it. Nothing you enter leaves your device or is stored.

Common uses

• Planning the paperwork before opening a shop, restaurant, workshop or office.
• Choosing between a proprietorship, a partnership, an LLP and a company, and seeing what each brings.
• Checking what changes when turnover or the number of employees crosses a limit.
• Giving a client, partner or bank a printed plan of the registrations.

The usual order

1. Set up the business: a proprietorship needs nothing; a partnership signs its deed and registers with the State’s Registrar of Firms; an LLP files RUN and FiLLiP, then its agreement in Form 3 within thirty days; a company incorporates through SPICe+, which also gets its PAN, TAN, EPFO and ESIC numbers and a bank account; a trust registers its deed.
2. PAN, then a current account in the business’s name.
3. Tax registrations: GST when it is mandatory (or voluntarily), profession tax in the States that levy it, TAN before you deduct tax at source.
4. Licences for the premises and activity: the State’s shops and establishments registration, the trade licence of the municipality or panchayat, FSSAI for food, the IEC for imports and exports, and sector licences such as drug, excise, factory and pollution consents.
5. When you employ people: the labour-code registration at ten workers, ESI at ten, EPF at twenty.
6. Recognition and protection: Udyam, DPIIT start-up recognition and the trade mark — any time, but early is better.

Limits at a glance

• GST: ₹40 lakh of aggregate turnover for suppliers of goods only in most States, ₹20 lakh for services and in the States that kept that limit, ₹10 lakh in Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura; selling goods to other States needs registration at any turnover (GST portal).
• FSSAI: a registration up to ₹1.5 crore of turnover, a State licence up to ₹50 crore, a Central licence above — and importers and some others are Central at any turnover (FSSAI order).
• Labour codes: an “establishment” has ten or more workers and registers within sixty days (OSH Code, ss.2(1)(v) and 3); a “factory” has twenty or more workers with power or forty without and needs a licence.
• ESI at ten persons in the districts ESIC covers, for employees earning up to ₹21,000 a month (ESIC); EPF at twenty employees (Code on Social Security, First Schedule).
• Udyam: micro up to ₹2.5 crore of investment and ₹10 crore of turnover, small up to ₹25 crore and ₹100 crore, medium up to ₹125 crore and ₹500 crore (Udyam).
• DPIIT start-ups: companies, registered firms, LLPs and co-operative societies up to ten years old, with turnover under ₹200 crore (Startup India).

Free, and what costs money

Udyam registration, GST registration and DPIIT recognition cost nothing on the official portals, and Udyam’s own site warns that no one else may charge for it. FSSAI charges ₹100 a year for a registration, ₹5,000 for a State licence and ₹7,500 for a Central licence. A company with up to ₹15 lakh of authorised capital pays no SPICe+ filing fee — only the State’s stamp duty, with ₹66 for the PAN and ₹65 for the TAN (MCA FAQs). A trade mark costs ₹4,500 a class by e-filing for an individual, start-up or small enterprise and ₹9,000 otherwise (IP India). Shops and establishments, trade licence and profession tax fees are set by your State or local body. Agents charge their own fees on top; you can file every one of these yourself.

Sources

Udyam Registration; the GST registration portal and the CGST Act rules applied by the GST registration checker; FoSCoS and FSSAI’s order on the turnover thresholds; the MCA’s SPICe+ FAQs; the DGFT’s Foreign Trade Policy, chapter 2; the Code on Social Security, 2020 and the OSH Code, 2020; ESIC’s coverage page; Startup India; and IP India’s trade mark fees. Profession tax follows each State’s own Act, as in the professional tax calculator.

Limitations

• Shops and establishments, trade licence, profession tax and sector licences are State and local rules: the checklist names them and where to apply, but your State’s portal and your local body set the exact form, fee and limits.
• It covers the common registrations of a new business, not every sector licence; the National Single Window System lists more.
• Turnover and staff are what you expect; when they change, run it again.
• For information only, not legal advice.

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