Getting your certificate of incorporation is a milestone worth celebrating. It is also the moment a set of statutory obligations begins. Several of them carry strict timelines under the Companies Act, 2013, and missing them can mean penalties or, in some cases, a company that is legally barred from starting business.
Below is a practical checklist of the areas most newly incorporated private companies need to address in their first few months. Timelines and forms change from time to time, so treat this as a map of what to look into — not a substitute for advice on your specific facts.
In the first 30 days
Hold your first board meeting. A company is expected to hold its first meeting of the board of directors within 30 days of incorporation. This is where early housekeeping — noting the certificate of incorporation, taking on record the registered office, and authorising bank account opening — is formally recorded.
Appoint your first statutory auditor. The board is required to appoint the company's first auditor within 30 days of incorporation. If the board does not, the members must do so within the following 90 days. Every company, however small, needs an auditor in place.
Open the company bank account and bring in subscription money. The subscribers to the memorandum have agreed to pay for their shares. That money should actually move into the company's account, because the next filing depends on it.
Within 60 days
Issue share certificates. Share certificates for the shares taken by the subscribers should be issued within 60 days of incorporation. These are the basic evidence of ownership in your company and are easy to overlook in the early rush.
Within 180 days
File the declaration of commencement of business (Form INC-20A). A company with share capital cannot begin business or exercise borrowing powers until a director files a declaration confirming that every subscriber has paid the value of the shares they agreed to take. This must be filed within 180 days of incorporation.
In practice. Consider two co-founders who incorporate a company, celebrate, and dive straight into building their product. They sign their first client, raise an invoice, and receive payment — all before filing INC-20A, and without moving their subscription money into the company account. On paper the company was never cleared to commence business, and the filing is now late and attracts a penalty. Everything they did was avoidable with a single filing in the first few months.
Set up your statutory records
Maintain your statutory registers. Companies are required to keep registers — of members, directors, charges, and more — from the outset. Building these correctly at the start is far easier than reconstructing them later.
Keep your registered office details current. If your registered office was not confirmed at incorporation, or if it changes, that has to be intimated to the Registrar within the prescribed time.
Tax and other registrations
Depending on what your company does and where, you may also need to look at:
- GST registration, if your turnover crosses the applicable threshold or you make inter-state supplies.
- Professional tax and Shops and Establishment registration, which are governed by the law of the state you operate in.
- Udyam (MSME) registration, which is optional but can unlock benefits available to smaller enterprises.
- PAN and TAN, which are usually allotted as part of the incorporation process itself — worth confirming you have both.
Plan for the annual cycle
Beyond these one-time steps, a company has recurring obligations — annual financial statements, an annual return, director KYC, and board and general meetings held at the required intervals.
In practice. Imagine a solo founder running a one-person company who treats the first year as "too early" for compliance and files nothing. By the second year the company has accumulated late fees on annual filings, and the director's identification is deactivated for a missed KYC — which then holds up signing a routine funding document at exactly the wrong moment. A simple compliance calendar in year one would have cost far less than the clean-up.
A well-run first year of compliance is not glamorous, but it protects everything you build on top of it — funding, contracts, and the ability to operate without a cloud of pending defaults. If you are working through this list for your own company, it is worth confirming the current forms and timelines, as the Ministry of Corporate Affairs updates them periodically.
