---
title: "How many companies in India actually still exist?"
description: "More than 3.7 million entities sit on India's companies register. Only 70.7% are Active, and more than a quarter have been struck off. Here is the full status breakdown."
author: "Pradeep Vanga"
published: 2026-09-11
updated: 2026-09-11
category: "Analysis"
tags: ["register-data", "company-status", "strike-off", "analysis"]
canonical: https://entiva.in/blog/how-many-companies-in-india-are-still-active/
publisher: "Entiva"
---

# How many companies in India actually still exist?

More than one in four entities on India's companies register no longer legally
exists.

Not dormant. Not struggling. Removed. **939,392 of them carry the status Strike
Off**, and another 27,194 are on their way out. Against a register of more than
3.7 million entities, that is 26.3% either gone or going.

The number that gets quoted in the press is the size of the register itself. It
is the least interesting number on this page.

## Where the figure comes from

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs publishes a company master file: one row per
registered entity, with its identifier, name, date of registration, state and
current status. We hold a snapshot of it, downloaded on
**8 September 2026**, and everything below is a count over that file.

Three things about it before any conclusion is drawn from it.

**It is a snapshot, and it is older than its download date.** We pulled the
file on 8 September 2026, but the resource itself records its last update as
**22 July 2026**. So these numbers describe the register as MCA published it in
July, not as it stood on the day we downloaded it. Two different dates, and the
earlier one is the one that governs what the figures mean.

**They are not all companies.** They are *entities*, and they are not all the
same kind of thing. Roughly 3.1 million carry a 21-character
[CIN](https://entiva.in/blog/how-to-read-a-cin-number/), which is a company. About 550,000 carry
the shorter LLP-style identifier, which is a limited liability partnership.
Anyone who quotes the full figure as a count of companies has quietly folded in
half a million LLPs.

**And it is missing a state.** We found this after publishing, by counting the
same register from the Ministry's own figures. The published copy counted here
carries a single entity with a Chhattisgarh CIN, where the Ministry's own
figures give 21,465 companies and 2,537 LLPs. They are not filed under a
neighbouring state. They are simply absent.

That is 24,002 entities the counts below do not contain, about two-thirds of
one per cent of the file. We have measured what putting them back would do
rather than assuming it is nothing: Active moves from 70.70% to 70.76% and
Strike Off from 25.57% to 25.52%. Nothing in the state table changes place,
because Chhattisgarh's total is an order of magnitude below the sixth state in
it. So the counts stand as published rather than being quietly restated, with
one honest qualification: the missing state is healthier than the register
average, 79.9% Active against 70.7%, so its absence makes the struck-off share
here very slightly worse than the truth, not better.

The row count matches the resource's own reported total exactly, and that is
worth stating plainly for what it is now known to be worth. A file can agree
with its own published total and still be missing a state, which is what
happened here. Internal consistency is not completeness, and it is not a check
on any individual figure below. We have not been able to re-query the source
value by value either, because the source's own filter interface times out
against a file this size.

## The whole register, by status

Every distinct status value in the snapshot, with its count. This is the full
vocabulary the register actually uses, which turns out to be considerably wider
than the handful of words most people have met. What each string means, and
the ACTIVE-compliance tag that is not a status, is in
[every company status on the MCA register](https://entiva.in/blog/mca-company-status-list-explained/).

| Status | Entities | Share |
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| Active | 2,597,823 | 70.70% |
| Strike Off | 939,392 | 25.57% |
| Amalgamated | 40,195 | 1.09% |
| Converted to LLP | 29,512 | 0.80% |
| Under process of striking off | 27,194 | 0.74% |
| Dissolved (Liquidated) | 11,970 | 0.33% |
| Inactive for e-filing | 10,261 | 0.28% |
| Under Liquidation | 8,515 | 0.23% |
| Dormant under section 455 | 2,595 | 0.07% |
| Converted and Dissolved | 1,953 | 0.05% |
| Under CIRP | 1,944 | 0.05% |
| Dissolved under section 59(8) | 983 | 0.03% |
| Converted to CMP and Dissolved | 981 | 0.03% |
| Dissolved under section 54 | 507 | 0.01% |
| Inactive | 202 | 0.01% |
| Dissolved | 186 | 0.01% |
| Strike Off-AwaitingPublication | 83 | 0.00% |
| Not available for efiling | 13 | 0.00% |
| Unclassified | 1 | 0.00% |
| Vanished | 1 | 0.00% |
| Under Process Of Strike Off | 1 | 0.00% |
| Not available for E-filing | 1 | 0.00% |
| Converted to LLP and Dissolved | 1 | 0.00% |

A few of those deserve a second look.

**Dormant under section 455 is almost nobody.** 2,595 entities, seven in every
ten thousand. Dormancy is the register's polite, formal way of going quiet, and
in practice companies do not use it. They simply stop filing and wait to be
struck off. That is worth knowing when you see the word: it is rare enough that
somebody made a deliberate choice.

**Under CIRP is 1,944.** That is every entity in the register currently inside a
corporate insolvency resolution process. Set against 939,392 struck off, it
tells you how Indian companies actually end. Formal insolvency is the exception.
Quiet administrative removal is the rule.

**And there is one entity with the status "Vanished".** Exactly one. We are not
going to name it.

Note also the untidiness: "Not available for efiling" and "Not available for
E-filing" are the same status typed twice, and "Under process of striking off"
appears once more with different capitalisation. A register assembled over
decades carries its history in its spelling.

## What one in four does not mean

This is the part where the number gets misread, so let us close the exits.

**It does not mean a quarter of Indian businesses failed.** Strike off is an
administrative removal, most often for not filing, and a company can be struck
off while the people behind it simply moved on, incorporated something else, or
never traded at all. Many were shelf companies that existed to be a company and
nothing more.

**It does not mean the remaining 70.7% are trading.** Active is a legal status.
It means the registrar has not removed the entity. It says nothing about whether
the company has employees, revenue, or a pulse. We have written separately about
[what each status actually means for someone about to sign something](https://entiva.in/blog/company-status-strike-off-meaning/),
and the short version is that Active is the floor, not the ceiling.

**And it does not mean the register is unreliable.** It means the register is
doing its job. Strike off is how a companies register stays honest about which
entities are still there.

## The cohort effect, which is the real finding

Split the register by the year each entity was registered, and ask what share of
each year's intake has since been struck off.

| Registered in | Entities | Since struck off |
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| 2000 | 32,378 | 55.6% |
| 2005 | 51,149 | 42.3% |
| 2010 | 88,827 | 45.0% |
| 2012 | 107,625 | 52.2% |
| 2015 | 101,673 | 36.0% |
| 2018 | 140,487 | 11.8% |
| 2020 | 178,938 | 18.7% |
| 2022 | 206,996 | 3.6% |
| 2024 | 236,833 | 1.6% |
| 2025 | 318,200 | 0.4% |

**More than half of the companies registered in 2012 are gone.** So are more
than half of the class of 2000.

Now the caution, because this table invites exactly one wrong conclusion.
The rate falls off for recent years not because newer companies are healthier
but because **strike off takes time**. A company has to stop filing, stay
stopped, be noticed, be served notice, and be published before the status
changes. A company incorporated in 2025 has not had the opportunity. Read the
recent rows as "not yet", not as "surviving".

What the older rows tell you is the honest long-run figure, and it is roughly
this: **give an Indian company two decades and about half of them will have been
removed from the register.**

One more thing in that table. 318,200 entities were registered in 2025, the
highest single year in the series, and the snapshot already holds 163,306 for
2026 by the eighth of September. Whatever else is true, the register is growing
faster than it is being cleaned.

## Where they are, and what they are

Of the roughly 3.1 million entities with a full CIN, **9,303 are listed
companies** and the rest are not. That is the ratio worth carrying around: for every listed
company whose numbers you can read in the press, there are roughly 335 whose
accounts exist only as a filing somebody has to go and fetch.

By state, the register concentrates hard:

| State | Entities |
| --- | ---: |
| Maharashtra | 755,653 |
| Delhi | 507,637 |
| West Bengal | 291,627 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 278,016 |
| Karnataka | 258,322 |
| Tamil Nadu | 251,291 |

Maharashtra and Delhi together hold about a third of everything.

Counts alone flatten the difference between them. The analysis of
[how long an Indian company actually lasts](https://entiva.in/blog/company-survival-rate-india/)
splits the same register by state and year of incorporation, which is where
the states stop looking alike: the share struck off runs from 42.6% to 16.6%.

## How this was counted

Nothing here needs a tool you do not have. The file is public, and the counts
are counts.

- **Source:** the MCA company master, as the ministry publishes it.
- **Snapshot:** downloaded 2026-09-08; the resource's own last-updated date is
  2026-07-22; 3,674,314 rows. That exact count is kept here, and nowhere else on
  the page, because it is how you confirm you are holding the same file we were.
- **Fields used:** `entity_id`, `status`, `registration_date`, `state`.
- **Status table:** a value count over `status`, unmodified. Values are printed
  exactly as the file spells them, including the duplicates.
- **Companies versus LLPs:** entities whose identifier is 21 characters are
  counted as companies; the rest carry LLP-style identifiers.
- **Listed versus unlisted:** the first character of the CIN, `L` or `U`.
- **Cohort table:** the first four characters of `registration_date`, counted
  against the four strike-off statuses.
- **Known dirt:** three rows carry registration years that cannot be real
  (`1111`, `5600`, `9076`). They are left in the totals and excluded from
  nothing, because three rows in 3.7 million change no figure on this page.

MCA's own Monthly Information Bulletin is the fuller official series if you want
to cross-check the totals against a government publication rather than a
government dataset.

## What to do with it

The aggregate is interesting. It is also not your problem.

If you are dealing with one company, the only number that matters is whether
*that* company is in the 70.7% or the 25.6%, and that check is free, takes about
thirty seconds, and needs no account. Do it before you sign, not after, and if
you have never done it, the
[two-minute check on whether a company is real](https://entiva.in/blog/how-to-check-if-a-company-is-real/)
walks through it.

And when the status comes back Active, remember what you have just learnt: it
means the entity has not been removed. It does not mean anyone is home. For
that you need the
[filings themselves](https://entiva.in/what-you-can-find/), and specifically whether the company
has been filing them at all.

*Written by the Entiva team, from a snapshot of the register we keep because
answering questions about Indian companies requires knowing what is in it.*

## Frequently asked

### How many companies are registered in India?

More than 3.7 million, and the figure grows every month, so treat any exact count as a reading rather than a constant. That total includes both companies and LLPs: roughly 3.1 million carry a 21-character CIN and about 550,000 carry an LLP-style identifier. The counts on this page are taken over one named snapshot, which the methodology note identifies.

### How many Indian companies are actually active?

2,597,823, or 70.70% of the register, carry the status Active. Active is a legal status meaning the entity has not been removed. It is not a statement that the company is trading, solvent or filing on time.

### How many Indian companies have been struck off?

939,392 carry the status Strike Off, which is 25.57% of the register, and a further 27,194 are under process of striking off. Together that is more than one in four.

## Related reading

- [What a company's status actually means: Active, Strike Off, Dormant](https://entiva.in/blog/company-status-strike-off-meaning/): A company's status on the register is one word that changes everything about whether you should sign. Here's what each one means, and what to do next.
- [Every company status on the MCA register, and what each one actually means](https://entiva.in/blog/mca-company-status-list-explained/): The register uses 23 status values, not five. Here is every one, the section of law behind it, and the ACTIVE-compliance tag that is not a status at all.
- [How long does an Indian company actually last?](https://entiva.in/blog/company-survival-rate-india/): Of the 14,75,643 companies and LLPs registered in India before 2015, 7,31,186 have since been struck off. Survival rates by year of incorporation and by state, from the register itself.

_Published by Entiva (https://entiva.in/), which retrieves documents from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs' View Public Documents service on a customer's behalf. Entiva is not affiliated with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and does not resell another provider's database. Free lookups use MCA company master data._