# What you can find out about an Indian company

> Revenue, directors, shareholding, charges and filing history: what the companies register actually tells you about any Indian company, and what it does not.

- Canonical page: https://entiva.in/what-you-can-find/

## Free, with no account

Any of the 37 lakh companies and LLPs on the register can be looked up for nothing, returning:

- Legal name
- CIN or LLPIN
- Status
- Date of incorporation
- State

Source: MCA company master data, from the ministry’s own register. This is enough to establish whether a company exists, when it was incorporated, and whether it is still alive. A company whose status reads Strike Off has been removed from the register and no longer legally exists. It is not enough to tell you about money: revenue, profit, shareholding and borrowings live in the filings themselves, and those are paid.

## Free, with an account

A free Entiva account adds the whole register record of any company: its registered office, capital, directors, signatories and the charges over its assets. With it come any director's record, the connections between companies and directors, and an alert when MCA publishes a new filing. The filed documents themselves are paid.

## The filings, in eight categories

MCA organises a company's documents into eight categories and sells them one at a time. An Entiva order retrieves all eight for every company in it.

- **Incorporation Documents** MoA, AoA, and the forms that brought the company into existence.
- **Annual Returns and Balance Sheet eForms** Annual returns and the audited financial statements attached to them.
- **Change in Directors/Designated Partner** Every appointment, resignation and change in designation, with dates.
- **Charge Documents** Charges created, modified and satisfied over the company’s assets.
- **Certificates** Certificates the registrar issued against the company’s filings.
- **LLP Forms (Conversion of company to LLP)** Present only where a company converted into an LLP.
- **Other eForm Documents** Capital changes, office shifts, resolutions, and the long tail of compliance.
- **Other** Attachments the registry does not slot into the categories above.

## What the register cannot tell you

- **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.
- **Filings lag reality by months.** Annual accounts arrive well after the year they describe: for a 31 March year end they are not due until about 30 October, 7 months later, and late filers take longer. Nobody has a current revenue figure for a private Indian company, including us. (Companies Act 2013, section 96 (AGM within six months of the year end) and section 137 (AOC-4 within 30 days of the AGM))
- **Some companies simply have not filed.** Where a company is in default a category can be genuinely empty. We tell an empty category apart from one MCA would not hand over, and say which one we found.
- **This is not legal or investment advice.** We deliver primary documents. What they mean for your decision is a judgement for you and your advisers.

_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._