Private Limited Company Registration in Mumbai

How Pvt Ltd Company Registration Works in Mumbai

Every Mumbai incorporation page on the internet — including, until today, our own — tells you the same thing: your company will be registered with the Registrar of Companies, Mumbai. That office, in the form everyone describes, stopped existing on 16 February 2026.

On that date the Ministry of Corporate Affairs brought into force a reorganisation notified as S.O. 4850(E) on 23 October 2025. The old RoC Mumbai, which covered twenty-eight of Maharashtra's thirty-six districts, was broken into three offices. Maharashtra now has four Registrars of Companies, not two.

The filing itself is unchanged. It is still SPICe+ on the MCA portal, still entirely online, still seven to ten working days when the paperwork is clean. What changed is which office issues your Certificate of Incorporation, where every ROC form you file for the life of the company goes — and, as we will show below, what it now takes to move your registered office across the harbour.

If you want the underlying process end to end, read our guide to private limited company registration in India. This page is about what is specific to Mumbai.

Mumbai Now Has Two Registrars — and Only One of Them Is in Mumbai

Here is the operative allocation, quoted from the notification itself.

RoC Pune does not appear in the February 2026 notification at all, which is how we know its eight districts were left alone. The arithmetic confirms it: 2 districts with Mumbai-I, 8 with Mumbai-II, 18 with Nagpur and 8 with Pune is 36 — every district in Maharashtra, accounted for exactly once.

Read the Mumbai-I row again. It is two districts. Mumbai City is about 157 square kilometres and Mumbai Suburban about 446. Together they run from Colaba to Dahisar in the west, to Mulund in the east and to Mankhurd on the harbour — and that is the whole of it. Cross the creek or the Thane border and you are with a different Registrar.

The Regional Director Moved Too — and Mumbai Kept Its Own

The Registrar is the first level of company administration. The second is the Regional Director, who decides compounding applications, most registered-office shifts, and a range of approvals under the Companies Act. That level was reorganised on the same date, and almost nobody is writing about it.

Put the two changes together and you get a fact worth stating plainly: Mumbai City and Mumbai Suburban are the only part of Maharashtra that kept both its Registrar and its Regional Director. Everywhere else in the state moved at least one level, and the whole of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region outside those two districts moved both.

Which Registrar Covers Your Mumbai Address?

Founders do not know which revenue district their office sits in. They know the locality on the rent agreement. So here is the lookup the other way round — the addresses people actually give us, mapped to the district and the Registrar.

The rule of thumb, and it is a clean one: if the address is on Salsette Island south of the Dahisar and Mulund municipal boundary, it is Mumbai-I. Everything across the creek, up the Ghodbunder Road or beyond the Vasai Creek is Mumbai-II. Because Mumbai City and Mumbai Suburban are the only two districts on the Mumbai-I side, this is one of the few jurisdiction questions in India that can be answered from a pin code with confidence — but we still confirm it against the address on the utility bill before filing.

Moving From Mumbai to Thane or Navi Mumbai Is No Longer a Simple Form

This is the practical part, and it is the reason we would rather you read this page before you incorporate than after.

Moving a registered office within the same city is an INC-22 and a board resolution. Straightforward. Moving it from the jurisdiction of one Registrar to another Registrar in the same state is a different animal. The proviso to section 12(5) of the Companies Act 2013 says a company shall not change the place of its registered office from the jurisdiction of one Registrar to the jurisdiction of another Registrar within the same State unless the change is confirmed by the Regional Director on an application made in the prescribed manner.

Until 15 February 2026 that proviso almost never bit in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, because Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Panvel and Vasai were all one Registrar's territory. Since 16 February 2026 they are not.

What the move now takes

One piece of good news worth knowing: the 2017 amendment to rule 28 removed the earlier requirement to advertise the proposed shift in newspapers and to serve individual notices on every creditor and debtor. The creditor position is now handled by declaration rather than by publication, which is why this is a matter of weeks rather than months when the file is clean.

The same logic runs the other way. A company that starts in Thane or Navi Mumbai to keep costs down, and later wants a Mumbai City registered office for the address on its letterhead, faces exactly the same procedure in reverse.

Why Mumbai Is Still Worth the Rent

We will make the honest case rather than the brochure one, because most of what is written about incorporating in Mumbai is written by people selling office space.

Businesses That Genuinely Suit a Mumbai Private Limited

A word about what a private limited company cannot do. Practice as an advocate, a chartered accountant or a company secretary cannot be carried on through a private limited company — the Advocates Act and the ICAI and ICSI regulations restrict practice to individuals, partnerships and LLPs. What a Mumbai professional firm often needs is a two-entity structure: the practice in its own permitted form, and a separate private limited company for consultancy, technology or support services. We set these up regularly and we will tell you where the line is.

Company Registration Across Mumbai & the MMR

We file for clients across the whole metropolitan region. The difference now is that we tell you which Registrar you are going to, before we file — not after the certificate arrives.

Benefits of Private Limited Company Registration

Instant Cost Estimator — Pvt Ltd in Mumbai

Get an indicative professional-fee estimate based on your company structure. Government fees (ROC, stamp duty, DSC tokens) are charged at actuals and confirmed on your free call.

Setting up an Indian subsidiary for an overseas parent? Use our foreign subsidiary set-up cost estimator instead — the cost structure is different.

Step-by-Step Registration Procedure

The process runs entirely online through the MCA portal. Which Registrar processes your file depends on the district of your registered office — Mumbai-I for Mumbai City and Mumbai Suburban, Mumbai-II at Navi Mumbai for Thane, Raigad, Palghar, Nashik and the rest of its territory.

Documents Required for Registration

Timeline & Cost Overview

On cost, the honest breakdown is: professional fees, MCA filing fees, DSC tokens, and Maharashtra stamp duty, which is the item that varies most and which is set out in its own section below. We quote government charges at actuals and show them separately — anyone advertising a single all-inclusive Mumbai figure without asking your authorised capital is guessing.

Your Registrar, PAN & TAN AO Code and GST State Code

Your PAN and TAN AO code is assigned from the jurisdiction of your registered office — find your AO code here. Note that income-tax jurisdiction, GST jurisdiction and company-law jurisdiction are three separate maps that do not align with each other; the Registrar split of February 2026 changed only the third.

Four Registrars in one state

Maharashtra now has more Registrars of Companies than any other state. Here is the whole picture in one place.

Two things follow from this table. First, the GST code is 27 everywhere — a supply from Andheri to Airoli is an intra-state supply attracting CGST and SGST, exactly as before, because the Registrar split has no GST consequence whatsoever. Second, and less comfortably: a Mumbai company and a Thane company are in the same state for tax, the same city for practical purposes, and in different jurisdictions for company law.

Profession Tax Comes With Your Incorporation in Maharashtra

Most states leave profession tax to be sorted out after incorporation. Maharashtra does not. Under MCA's own service list, profession tax registration is applied for through SPICe+ itself for new companies incorporated in Maharashtra — with effect from 23 February 2020. Only two other states have this: Karnataka (from 8 October 2020) and West Bengal (from 12 March 2020).

The AGILE-PRO-S form covers both certificates, and the difference between them catches out almost every first-time founder:

What is actually deducted

The February figure is not an error. Maharashtra collects ₹200 for eleven months and ₹300 in the twelfth so that the annual total lands exactly on the ₹2,500 ceiling that Article 276 of the Constitution sets for taxes on professions, trades, callings and employments. Payroll software configured for a flat ₹200 will under-deduct every February.

Shops & Establishments in Mumbai: You Probably Do Not Need a Licence

This section corrects something the internet gets wrong about Mumbai more consistently than almost anything else in this field.

The governing law is the Maharashtra Shops and Establishments (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 2017, which replaced the 1948 Act. It draws a line at ten workers, and the two sides of that line are completely different obligations:

Most newly incorporated Mumbai companies are on the section 7 side on day one. They do not need the "Gumasta licence" that a great many websites will happily sell them — they need an intimation and a receipt, and they should keep the receipt.

On doing it through SPICe+: MCA's published service list states that the first-time Shops and Establishments registration number is provided for companies incorporated in Delhi, with effect from 7 June 2021, and names no other state. However, the INC-35 form itself carries a second declaration block headed "Shops and Establishment (Mumbai)", referring to the Maharashtra Act of 2017 — which suggests the Maharashtra route exists or is intended. We do not assert either position: we check what the form actually offers on the day we file, and where it is not available we handle the intimation or registration separately. Anyone telling you with certainty which it is has not looked at the form.

Stamp Duty on MoA & AoA in Maharashtra

Stamp duty is a state subject, it is paid through the MCA portal as part of the SPICe+ filing, and in Maharashtra it went up materially in 2024. Founders comparing quotes across states should know this.

Two practical consequences. First, on ₹10 lakh of authorised capital the Articles now attract ₹3,000 rather than ₹2,000; on ₹1 crore, ₹30,000 rather than ₹20,000. Second, the same 0.3% applies when you later increase authorised capital through Form SH-7, on the increase. So incorporating with a modest authorised capital and raising it when you actually need it does not save duty — but nor does it cost extra, which is the more useful way round to think about it. Set authorised capital to what the next eighteen months genuinely require.

Comparing states? Our stamp duty calculator for private limited companies sets out the position across India.

Do Not Choose Mumbai for the Subsidies

We could write this section the way most agencies do, listing every Maharashtra scheme as though a Nariman Point company could claim it. Here is what is actually true.

Maharashtra's industrial incentives run through the Maharashtra Industries, Investment and Services Policy 2025, notified on 31 December 2025 and running to 30 December 2030, with a stated target of ₹70.5 lakh crore of investment and around 50 lakh jobs. Like every Maharashtra incentive policy before it, it allocates benefits by taluka classification — Groups A, B, C, D and D+, plus special categories for Vidarbha, Marathwada, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, the no-industry districts, naxalism-affected areas and aspirational districts. The less developed the taluka, the larger the capital subsidy, the stamp duty exemption on industrial land, the electricity duty exemption and the interest subsidy. Published analyses of the 2025 policy report that it carries over the area classification from the Package Scheme of Incentives 2019 rather than notifying a new one.

We have read the taluka annexure to the predecessor policy, the Package Scheme of Incentives 2019, and it is unambiguous: Greater Mumbai is Group A, as are Thane, Kalyan, Ulhasnagar, Ambernath, Vasai, Palghar, Panvel and Uran. Here is what Group A is worth under that scheme's own Table 3.

A Group A unit is not shut out of everything — the additional incentives at paragraph 4.8, for technology upgradation, quality certification, cleaner production and patent registration, are expressly extended to Group A and Group B. But those are small sums measured in lakhs. The basket of incentives that actually moves a business case — capital subsidy, interest subsidy, electricity duty — is a dash for Greater Mumbai.

The one place Mumbai is not written out: services

MIISP 2025 is, as its name says, an Industries, Investment and Services policy, and the services chapter is where the MMR gets a look in. It is reported to cover IT and ITeS, tourism and hospitality, medical value travel, transport and logistics, financial services and education, with rental and lease subsidies, EPF reimbursement, skilling subsidies, an R&D fund and stamp duty and electricity duty relief — and Groups A and B are inside it, not excluded.

The catch is the threshold. Group A and B carry the highest employment bars in the state — reported at around 350 employees for an MSME-category services unit and 750 for a special large-scale unit, against materially lower numbers in the less developed groups. So the services incentives are real in Mumbai, but they are built for scale, not for a company that has just incorporated.

None of which is an argument against Mumbai. It is an argument for choosing Mumbai for the reasons Mumbai is actually good — regulators, capital, courts, customers and talent — rather than for a subsidy that is not there yet.

FDI, FEMA and the Filings That Follow Incorporation

More Indian subsidiaries of foreign parents are registered in Mumbai than anywhere else in the country, and it is where we do most of this work. Incorporation is the easy half. The filings that follow are time-bound, and the penalties for missing them are real.

On the tax side, a company with a foreign parent will usually have international transactions with associated enterprises, which brings transfer pricing documentation and Form 3CEB, and outward remittances that require Form 15CA and 15CB. If your structure is a branch, liaison or project office rather than a subsidiary, the routes differ — see branch office, liaison office and project office registration, or our foreign subsidiary company service.

Licences & Registrations Applicable in Mumbai

Why Choose TAXAJ for Your Mumbai Company

TAXAJ does not have an office in Mumbai. We serve Mumbai clients from our offices in Delhi, Bengaluru, Bihar and Goa, and the entire incorporation is online — DSC by video KYC, documents by secure upload, filings through the MCA portal. We say this plainly because a firm that invents a Mumbai address on its website is telling you something about how it will handle yours.

Post-Incorporation Compliances

See our full annual compliance guide for private limited companies for the complete calendar.

Private Limited vs LLP vs OPC in Mumbai

Compare in detail: private limited company, LLP registration and one person company.

Frequently Asked Questions