---
title: "How to check if a company is real before you give them money"
description: "A quarter of the entities on India's companies register no longer legally exist. Here is how to check the one in front of you, free, in about two minutes."
author: "Pradeep Vanga"
published: 2026-09-09
updated: 2026-09-10
category: "Guide"
tags: ["due-diligence", "company-status", "company-verification"]
canonical: https://entiva.in/blog/how-to-check-if-a-company-is-real/
publisher: "Entiva"
---

# How to check if a company is real before you give them money

You are about to hand over money to a company you have never dealt with. A
deposit on a flat. An advance to a supplier. Three months of notice period at a
new job that is really a bet on the employer still existing in a year.

The website looks fine. Someone answered the phone. There is a GST number on
the invoice.

None of that tells you whether the company exists.

That sounds dramatic, so here is the number. India's companies register held
more than 3.7 million companies and LLPs when we last pulled it. Of those,
**939,392 have been struck off**. That is one in four. Add the ones
being wound up, amalgamated, liquidated or already dissolved and **29.3% of
everything on the register is something other than Active**.

So roughly three in ten times you look up a company, the answer is not the
simple one you expected. That is not a reason to be frightened of doing
business. It is a reason to spend two minutes before you spend anything else.

## The two-minute check anyone can do, free

Five fields, no account, no payment. They come from MCA company master data,
which the ministry publishes openly, and they cover every
registered company and LLP in the country.

| What you look up | What it actually tells you |
| --- | --- |
| Legal name | Whether the entity on the invoice is the entity that exists |
| CIN or LLPIN | The permanent identifier. Names change, this does not |
| Status | Whether it legally exists right now |
| Date of incorporation | How much history could possibly be behind it |
| State | Which registrar it answers to |

Do them in that order. Each one can end the exercise.

### Start with the name, and expect it to disagree

The single most common way this goes wrong is not fraud. It is that the name on
the invoice is not the name on the register.

Trading names, brand names and legal names drift apart constantly. A business
you know as one thing may be registered as something longer and duller with a
"Private Limited" on the end. Sometimes there are two entities, an old one and
a new one, and you are being invoiced by whichever is convenient.

Names are also less unique than people assume. Normalise away the punctuation
and the suffixes across the register and **13,318 entities share a name with at
least one other entity**. That is a small share of 3.7 million, but it is
thirteen thousand chances to look up the wrong company and feel reassured by
someone else's clean record.

Which is why the answer is never the name. It is the number.

### Then get the CIN, and read it

A Corporate Identity Number is 21 characters, permanent, and unique to one
company. Ask for it. A real business hands it over without blinking, because it
is printed on their own filings. Hesitation here is itself information.

The CIN is also structured, so it answers questions before you open anything.
Take an illustrative one, `U68200TS2023PTC999999`. It is not a real company's:

- `U` says unlisted
- `68200` is the industry it registered under
- `TS` is Telangana
- `2023` is the year it was incorporated
- `PTC` is the company type
- the rest is its registration number in that state

Read left to right and you know roughly what you are dealing with. The year is
the block most people should care about most: a company incorporated four
months ago asking for a six-month advance is a different proposition from one
that has been trading since 1994. Age is not quality. It just bounds how much
history could exist.

If what you were given has fewer than 21 characters and a hyphen in it, you are
probably holding an LLPIN, and you are dealing with a limited liability
partnership rather than a company. It files different things.

There is more in [how to read a CIN](https://entiva.in/blog/how-to-read-a-cin-number/), including
what each company type actually means.

### Now the status, which is the one that matters

One word, and it can end the conversation.

**Active** means the registrar has not removed the company. That is all it
means. It is a pulse, not a physical. A company can be Active while having
filed nothing for three years and having pledged every asset it owns to a bank.

**Strike Off** means the registrar has removed it from the register. Whatever
the website says, the entity you thought you were dealing with is no longer on
the list of companies that exist. This is the second most common status on the
register, which surprises people who assume it is exotic. If you are looking at
one, take advice before you transact rather than after.

**Under process of striking off** means the removal has started. Read it as
Strike Off with a countdown.

**Dormant** is the one that catches people out, because it sounds bad and is
not. It is a formal, compliant way of staying in existence while inactive. Think
hibernation rather than collapse. But a dormant company should not be sending
you an invoice, so if one is, ask why.

**Amalgamated, Dissolved, Liquidated** all mean the company ended by a specific
legal route. Whoever you were dealing with is now somebody else, or nobody.

Here is the whole register, by status, from our snapshot of 8 September 2026:

| 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% |
| Everything else | 6,857 | 0.19% |

The long tail matters less than the top two lines. Seven in ten Active, one in
four struck off, and a small remainder in various stages of ending.

[What each status actually means](https://entiva.in/blog/company-status-strike-off-meaning/)
goes through them properly, including what to do when you see each one.

## Six situations, and what each one should really check

The two-minute check is the same for everybody. What you do next is not.

**You are taking a job.** Status and age, then whether the company files. An
employer that has stopped filing its annual returns is telling you something
about its finances that the offer letter will not. If it is a young startup,
the age block of the CIN plus the absence of filings is most of the picture you
are going to get.

**You are paying a deposit.** To a builder, a landlord, a coworking operator, a
travel or education agent. Status first, because handing a deposit to an entity
that has been struck off is a problem you do not want to discover afterwards. Then charges, which is the register of what the
company has already pledged to lenders. Money you hand over is not first in the
queue behind a bank.

**You are a freelancer taking on a first client.** Status, age, and whether
they file. You are extending credit whether or not you call it that: you do the
work now and get paid later. Price that, and register yourself as a micro
enterprise before you invoice rather than after:
[how to check a client before you take the work](https://entiva.in/blog/check-a-client-before-you-take-the-work/).

**You are giving a new customer credit.** Same as above with more at stake.
This is the situation where the accounts are worth paying for, because the
direction of travel over two years tells you more than any single figure. And
if you are already past that point and the invoices have stopped being paid,
the checks change: see
[what the filings tell you about whether a customer can pay](https://entiva.in/blog/customer-not-paying-what-filings-show/).

**You are putting money into someone else's company.** A friend, a relative, a
former colleague. Shareholding and capital history, which live in the annual
return. This is also the situation where people skip the check hardest, because
asking feels rude. Ask anyway. A company that keeps clean filings will not mind.

**You are buying equipment or a vehicle from a company.** Charges, before
anything else. An unreleased charge from years ago is the expensive surprise in
asset deals, and it is sitting in a public filing the whole time.

## When free is not enough

The free fields establish identity and existence. They contain no money.

Revenue, profit, who the directors are and when they changed, who owns the
shares, what has been pledged to whom: all of that sits in filings the company
has made with the registrar, and those are public but not free. The registrar
charges for inspection. On MCA's own portal that is ₹100 per company, ₹50 for
an LLP, and paid access to what you bought stays open for seven days before it
lapses. That ₹100 is the registrar's fee, not a service charge, so it is what
inspection costs however you go about it; [what a single retrieval fee
covers](https://entiva.in/pricing/) is a separate question.

The documents come in [eight categories](https://entiva.in/what-you-can-find/), one journey
each, with a fresh CAPTCHA every few files and an encoded archive at the end
rather than PDFs. That is the
part people give up on, and it is why so many settle for a summary from a
database that copied the same filings months ago without showing anyone the
document.

Two honest limits before you spend anything:

**The accounts are old.** A company files its audited accounts months after the
year they describe. There is no live revenue figure for a private Indian
company, and anyone offering one is reading the same delayed filing.

**They might not exist.** A company in default may simply not have filed. That
is a finding rather than a failure, and it is often the most useful thing you
learn.

[How to find out what a private company earns](https://entiva.in/blog/how-to-find-a-private-company-revenue-india/)
covers where the number lives and how far to trust it.

## Four things the register will not tell you

Worth knowing before you lean on it.

**It holds what was filed, not what is true.** A document proves a filing was
made on a date. It does not prove the contents were accurate. An auditor signing
off means something, and it is not a guarantee.

**It lags.** Directors resign and the filing follows weeks later. Accounts
arrive months after the year. Every field you read is a photograph of a moment
that has already passed.

**Absence is ambiguous until you check.** A missing filing might mean default,
or might mean the deadline has not arrived. Know which one you are looking at
before you draw a conclusion.

**It says nothing about behaviour.** Plenty of companies with immaculate
filings are difficult to work with, and plenty of good businesses are late with
paperwork. The register tells you whether an entity exists and what it has
declared. It does not tell you whether they will pay you on time.

## What to actually do

1. Get the legal name and the CIN in writing, on the invoice, the offer letter
   or the agreement. Not the brand name.
2. Look the CIN up and check the status before any money moves.
3. Read the year of incorporation and ask whether the ask is proportionate to
   the age.
4. If the status is anything other than Active, stop and ask what is going on.
   You may get a perfectly good answer.
5. If the amount is material, pay for the filings and read the accounts and the
   charges. Two years of revenue beats one, and an unreleased charge is worth
   finding before you sign.
6. Record the CIN in your own files, not just the name. In five years it will
   still resolve to the same entity.

You can [look up any Indian company or LLP on Entiva](https://entiva.in/) free, no account, and
see the name, CIN, status, incorporation date and state straight away. When the
answer is Active and the amount is large enough that you need what is behind it,
the filings are a step away and you get the documents themselves.

The check costs two minutes. The alternative costs whatever you were about to
hand over.

*Figures in this post come from MCA company master data, as on
8 September 2026, covering the whole register of companies and LLPs. Registry fees and the seven-day access window are as observed on MCA's
View Public Documents service.*

## Frequently asked

### Can I check an Indian company for free?

Yes. The legal name, CIN, current status, date of incorporation and state for every registered company and LLP come from MCA company master data, and you can look them up without paying or creating an account. What costs money is the filings behind those fields: accounts, directors, shareholding and charges.

### What does it mean if a company's status says Strike Off?

It has been removed from the register. Whatever its website says, there is no longer a legal entity there to contract with, and its assets are frozen. Strike Off is the second most common status on the register, so it is not a rare thing to run into.

### Does Active mean a company is doing well?

No. Active means the registrar has not removed it. A company can be Active while having filed no accounts for three years and having charges outstanding over every asset it owns. Treat it as a pulse, not a health check.

## 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.
- [How to read a CIN: what those 21 characters tell you](https://entiva.in/blog/how-to-read-a-cin-number/): A Corporate Identity Number isn't a random string. Each block of it tells you something real about a company, before you open a single filing.
- [A customer has stopped paying. What the filings tell you about whether they can](https://entiva.in/blog/customer-not-paying-what-filings-show/): Before you write it off or escalate, the register answers one question: are they in trouble, or just squeezing you? Here is how to read the filings for it.

_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._