Before commissioning anyone, there is a set of public Indian registers you can search without help and without cost. Here is what each one settles, what it cannot, and where the questions start that records alone will not answer.
Most of what a buyer is told about an Indian supplier comes from that supplier. The registers below are the part that does not. They are maintained by the Indian state, they are searchable by anyone, and running them takes an afternoon.
None of them will tell you whether the goods will be right. That is the honest limit of a desk check, and it is worth knowing before you start rather than after.
A ten-digit code issued by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade. No consignment leaves India without one.
That the entity is registered to export at all, and the name and address it registered under.
It carries no indication of whether they manufacture, and none of scale, quality or solvency.
The tax registration number. The GST portal's taxpayer search returns basic particulars without a login.
Registered name, status, constitution, date of registration — and the declared nature of business activity, which distinguishes manufacturing from wholesale, retail and export.
Nature of business is self-declared. A valid GSTIN proves tax registration, not that the goods are made where you think.
The Ministry of Corporate Affairs register, covering companies and LLPs.
Incorporation date, registered office, directors, charges, and whether annual filings are current.
Only companies and LLPs appear. A great many capable Indian manufacturers are proprietorships or partnerships and are simply absent.
The micro, small and medium enterprise register.
Declared activity — manufacturing or trading or services — plus the plant and machinery investment band the enterprise falls into.
Registration is voluntary in practice and self-declared. The investment band brackets scale; it does not describe capability.
Registration with the council covering the product category.
The category exported, and the class registered under: manufacturer exporter, merchant exporter, or both.
A merchant exporter buys from producers and exports under its own name. That is ordinary and legal — but it means the exporter is not the maker.
The customs electronic gateway, through which shipping bills are filed.
That consignments have actually moved — and on a third-party or merchant export, the shipping bill names the manufacturer alongside the exporter.
Access to another party's records is limited. Absence of a record you can see is not absence of trade.
India distinguishes formally between a manufacturer exporter and a merchant exporter. A merchant exporter buys from producers and exports under its own name. It is an ordinary, legal, officially recognised model with its own tax treatment and its own registration class.
It is not a warning sign. It is simply a fact you want established rather than assumed — because the questions you would ask about a factory are different from the questions you would ask about the firm selling you its output. On a third-party export, the shipping bill names both.
This is the check most buyers skip, and the one where the ground is least solid.
A management-system certificate covers a named scope at a named site. Certificates are routinely presented for a scope that does not include the product being bought, or for a site that is not where production would happen.
Certificates expire and are suspended. The copy you were sent is a photograph of a moment. Ask the issuing body for current status rather than accepting the image.
A certificate is issued by a certification body, which should itself be accredited by an accreditation body. In India there is independent documentation of certification bodies operating fabricated accreditation bodies, with forged logos and cloned websites — so confirming the certificate exists is not sufficient. Confirm the accreditor exists too, through the international directories of recognised accreditation bodies.
India's own laboratory accreditation board has issued a public notice about laboratories falsely claiming accreditation. A test report is a claim about a sample on a date; it says nothing about the consignment you would receive.
Run all six and you will know that a company exists, what it has declared itself to be, whether its filings are current and whether goods have moved. That is real and it is worth having.
What you will still not know: whether the machinery matches the specification, whether the plant you would be buying from is the plant you were shown, whether the quoted lead time survives the order book, whether the certificate scope covers your product, whether the quality that arrives matches the sample you approved, or whether the bank account you have been given belongs to the company on the register.
Those are questions of fact too. They are simply not answerable from a desk — and answering them is the work we do.
What a “verified supplier” badge actually meansThe marketplace checks, in full, and the four things they are silent onTell us what you are buying and where you have got to. If verification is not the right next step, we will say so.