🇮🇳How to verify a supplier in India

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MCA21, Ministry of Corporate Affairs

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CIN (Corporate Identity Number, 21 chars) / LLPIN

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Status reads Active, Strike Off, Under Liquidation or Amalgamated, and only Active is safe to transact with. The CIN is self-describing: character 1 is L (listed) or U (unlisted), characters 2 to 6 are the NIC code of the activity declared at incorporation. It tells you what the company registered to do, not what it makes today: MCA proves the legal entity and its status, while manufacturing is shown by a facility or product regulator (BIS licence, FSSAI licence, drug or device licence, export inspection approval).

• For food, agri, spices or pharma the strongest free proof is the sector Export Promotion Council register: APEDA for agri and processed food (https://agriexchange.apeda.gov.in/AgriDirectory/Exporter/Exporters), the Spices Board for spices (https://www.indianspices.com/), Pharmexcil for pharma (https://pharmexcil.com/members). Appearing there means a genuinely registered RCMC-holding exporter in that commodity.
• Tax identity: confirm the 15-digit GSTIN on the GST portal Search Taxpayer tool (https://services.gst.gov.in/services/searchtp), which returns the legal name, trade name and Active or Cancelled status. Characters 3 to 12 of the GSTIN are the firm's PAN, and since 2017 the 10-digit IEC also equals the PAN, so a real exporter's GSTIN and IEC must share the same embedded PAN; a mismatch is a red flag you can catch with no lookup.
• Export eligibility and blacklist: validate the IEC and its Denied Entity List status on the DGFT common portal (https://www.dgft.gov.in/CP/?opt=view-any-iec) using the IEC plus the first three letters of the firm name. A company on the Denied Entity List is barred from export, do not transact.
• Udyam (MSME) cannot be used to vet a third party: it has no public directory and its verify flow sends a one-time code to the registrant's own phone.

Before you sign: five asks no registry can answer

The register proves the company exists and who signs. It says nothing about whether the supplier survives a bad quarter, a fire or a key person leaving. Serious suppliers answer these five asks without friction; hesitation on any of them is information too.

• Business continuity: what happens to your order if their plant loses power, a strike hits or their systems go down? Ask for the plan, not a reassurance.
• Liability insurance: is product or professional liability insured, with which insurer and to what ceiling? A certificate of insurance is a one-page email for a real firm.
• Exit terms: how do you terminate if it goes wrong, what notice and fees apply, and how do you get your tooling, molds or data back?
• Support in numbers: ask for response and resolution times as figures, not adjectives. A supplier who commits to hours in writing has a support process; one who writes fast support does not.
• Named people: who exactly runs production and who owns your account? Continuity of a named team matters more than a polished sales deck, and employee-review sites often show whether that team stays.

General commercial hygiene, not legal advice.