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Last updated: 10 September 2026 — prepared by AU Corporate's company registration and compliance practice.
A realistic, phase-by-phase timeline and a full cost breakdown — one-time setup costs and the recurring annual compliance costs that follow — for setting up a company in India, plus the specific reasons real-world timelines and budgets differ from the numbers quoted at a glance.
Schedule ConsultationThere isn't a single number that applies to every company, because the timeline is driven by a handful of variables that differ from one setup to the next: the entity type chosen (a Private Limited Company/WOS moves differently than a Branch or Liaison Office — see our company registration guide for the full comparison), whether the investment falls under the Automatic Route or requires Government Approval Route review (covered in full on our FDI channels page), whether any proposed director is a foreign national whose documents need apostille or embassy legalisation, and whether a resident director already exists or needs to be sourced. The phase-by-phase breakdown below assumes a standard Private Limited Company/WOS under the Automatic Route — the most common path for a foreign parent — and flags where each of these variables typically adds time.
The full journey from entity selection to a working, banked, funded entity generally runs 8-12 weeks, matching the ranges on our company registration guide. Here's what happens in each window and, more importantly, what actually drives how long it takes:
Choosing between a Private Limited Company/WOS, LLP, or a Branch/Liaison/Project Office, applying for a Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) for each proposed director, and assembling the document set. For a foreign parent, apostille or embassy legalisation of the parent company's documents runs through authorities in the home country rather than anything India-side — it's the single biggest driver of how long this phase actually takes.
Name reservation and the SPICe+ incorporation filing (Form INC-32) with the Registrar of Companies. Automatic Route FDI generally clears within this window; Government Approval Route investments run longer because DPIIT and sector-ministry review sit on top of the standard filing.
PAN and TAN are issued automatically alongside the Certificate of Incorporation, but opening a corporate current account still requires the MOA/AOA, KYC documents and a board resolution, and the account must sit with an RBI-authorised (AD Category-I) bank. A missing apostille on a foreign document is the most common reason this phase slips.
GST registration where the turnover threshold is crossed (or voluntary registration for an entity billing only its overseas parent), capital infusion and the resulting FC-GPR filing to RBI, and setting up statutory registers, EPFO/ESIC and initial payroll and accounting processes.
The entity is banked, funded, registered and ready to invoice, hire and operate. This is also the natural point to have the ongoing compliance calendar — annual RoC filings, the FLA return, board meeting cadence — mapped out before day-to-day operations ramp up.
A number sometimes quoted for the SPICe+ filing alone — a matter of days once submitted correctly — isn't the same as the timeline a first-time foreign parent should plan for. The gap is almost always explained by a small, recurring set of delays: a proposed company name being rejected and needing resubmission, a foreign director's Digital Signature Certificate taking longer to process than a resident director's, apostille turnaround on the parent company's documents (which runs through the home country's own authorities, not anything India-side can expedite), and resident-director appointment paperwork not being lined up before incorporation is filed. None of these are unusual, and none of them reflect a slow MCA process — they're simply the difference between the fastest possible filing and what actually happens end to end.
These are the costs incurred once, to get from entity selection to an operational company. Two figures get conflated a lot in this space: the government filing fee (modest, and often nil for the incorporation filing itself) and the professional/advisory fee sitting on top of it, which is what actually varies most with entity complexity.
₹3,000-5,000
MCA filing and name reservation charges. The SPICe+ incorporation filing itself is fee-exempt for companies with authorised capital up to ₹15 lakh under the Companies (Registration Offices and Fees) Rules, so most of what sits in this line is state stamp duty on the incorporation documents — which is set state by state rather than nationally, so the same filing can cost noticeably more or less depending on where the registered office is.
₹10,000-20,000
Drafting the MOA/AOA and board resolutions, plus — for a foreign parent — coordinating apostille or embassy legalisation on documents originating outside India.
₹5,000-10,000
KYC documentation support and coordination with an RBI-authorised (AD Category-I) bank. This doesn't include the bank's own minimum-balance requirement, which sits outside this budget and varies by bank.
₹2,000-5,000
PAN/TAN arrive automatically with incorporation at no extra cost; this line mainly covers GST registration support once it applies.
₹15,000-25,000
Statutory registers, first board meeting documentation, EPFO/ESIC setup, and initial accounting and payroll configuration.
₹20,000-50,000
The advisory/CA/CS fee for managing the filing end-to-end. This is the line that moves most with entity complexity — a foreign director, a Government Route sector, or sourcing a resident director all push it toward the higher end.
A few items commonly sit outside these ranges and are worth budgeting for separately: a registered office lease or virtual office arrangement, any travel cost for a foreign director who needs to be in India in person, and the receiving bank's own minimum-balance requirement. None of these are registration costs in the strict sense, but all of them show up in a first-year budget.
Stamp duty on the incorporation documents is the single largest state-variable line in the setup budget, because it's set under each state's own stamp act rather than a uniform national schedule — the same authorised capital and document set can attract close to a nominal amount in some states and a noticeably higher figure in others. This is one of the more common surprises for a foreign parent comparing quotes across advisors, since two accurate quotes for the same entity type can differ meaningfully purely because of where the registered office sits. It's worth confirming the applicable stamp duty for the specific state in question rather than assuming a single figure applies nationally, since state stamp acts are amended independently of central company law and change on their own schedule.
The one-time setup budget above is only part of the picture — registering a company is the start of the compliance relationship, not the end of it. Recurring annual costs (audit, RoC filings, income tax, GST where applicable, and RBI reporting for FDI-funded entities) typically run in a similar order of magnitude to the one-time setup cost, repeated every year, and are the line first-time budgets most often leave out entirely. For the full compliance framework these sit inside, see our regulatory compliance guide. For the actual dates and filing mechanics behind these costs, see our annual compliance calendar.
Every Indian company must have its financial statements audited annually, regardless of size or turnover — there is no small-company exemption from the audit itself.
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Financial statements (Form AOC-4) and the annual return (Form MGT-7/7A) are due every year with the Registrar of Companies, alongside the Annual General Meeting.
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Filed annually under the Income Tax Act, 2025 (which replaced the 1961 Act from 1 April 2026), plus advance tax instalments through the year where applicable.
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Monthly and annual return filings for any entity that has registered for GST — voluntary or threshold-triggered — for as long as the registration stays active.
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Any entity holding foreign investment on its books must file the Annual Return on Foreign Liabilities and Assets with RBI every year, independent of whether any transaction happened that year.
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Many foreign-owned entities retain a company secretary and, where the board is otherwise entirely foreign, a resident director to satisfy the Companies Act residency requirement — an ongoing cost most first-time budgets miss.
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Every one of the variables on this page — entity type, FDI route, director nationality, state — changes your specific numbers. Tell us about your setup and we'll walk through the real timeline and cost for your situation.