A newly registered business needs somewhere to bank almost immediately, and the bank that opens that account usually keeps the relationship. That makes new business registrations the highest-intent sourcing pool a liabilities team has. The difficulty is that the register most banks use to find them — MCA incorporations — sees only a fraction of the businesses actually starting up.
This guide covers what each register contributes to current account sourcing, the entity-type distinction that decides how an RM should approach a lead, and which parts of the pitch do not survive scrutiny.
First, a correction worth making
You will hear that a new company is legally required to open a current account. That is not accurate, and it is worth getting right before it appears in a deck a bank's compliance team reads.
There is no statute compelling a company to open a current account. What is true is that it is practically obligatory, for reasons that are stronger than a rule:
- A company or LLP is a separate legal entity with its own PAN, issued at incorporation.
- Under RBI KYC norms an account for that entity must be opened in the entity's own name, supported by its constitutional documents — it cannot practically run through a director's personal savings account.
- Tax payments, vendor settlements, payroll and receipts all have to route through an account in the business's name.
So the outcome is near-certain and time-boxed without being mandatory. That distinction costs you nothing in the pitch and buys credibility with the people who sign off on data purchases.
The coverage gap
MCA-derived feeds — the standard source for "new company" leads — cover companies and LLPs only. Reported MCA figures put new incorporations at roughly 20,000 per month (around 20,718 in May 2025, and about 1.85 lakh across FY 2023-24). Those are real, addressable businesses, and they skew urban: Maharashtra accounts for roughly 17% of new registrations, Uttar Pradesh 11% and Delhi 9%, with Maharashtra, Delhi and UP together making up over 40% of active companies.
What that feed cannot show you is every proprietorship and partnership, because those entities never file with MCA at all. They exist in the GST register instead.
| MCA incorporation feed | GST registration data | |
|---|---|---|
| Companies and LLPs | Yes | Yes, if registered |
| Proprietorships | No | Yes |
| Partnerships (unregistered as LLP) | No | Yes |
| Volume | ~20,000/month (reported) | Materially larger |
| Directors / designated partners | Yes | No |
| Paid-up capital | Yes | No |
| Registered address | Yes | Yes |
| Entity type | Yes | Yes (constitution of business) |
| Business activity | Industry code | Nature of activities |
| Current registration status | Filing status | Active / cancelled / suspended |
On the volume figures
The MCA numbers above come from published reports and carry the periods they refer to. We deliberately do not quote a monthly GST registration figure, because the numbers circulating in this market vary widely — we have seen one lakh, 1.6 lakh and two lakh per month asserted in vendor material, sometimes in the same deck. Check official statistics for the current period and cite the period. A bank that catches an inflated number in your pitch will discount everything else in it.
The full register-by-register comparison is in GST data vs MCA company data.
What the GST record gives an RM, and what it does not
The registration record supplies legal name, trade name, registration date, constitution of business, taxpayer type, principal place of business including PIN, nature of business activity, jurisdiction and current status.
It does not contain a phone number, an email address or a contact person. The GST system collects a mobile number for OTP purposes and does not publish it. Any lead file pairing a GSTIN with a mobile number obtained that number from somewhere else — a directory listing, the business's own website, an MCA-filed company email, or a third-party contact panel.
This matters more for banks than for most buyers, because a bank's procurement and compliance functions will ask where the contact data came from, and "public GST data" is not a truthful answer for that column. Before signing anything, get a per-field source table from the provider — the four joining methods and how to tell which you have been sold are set out in how GST contact databases are built.
Two claims to strike from any pitch you receive:
- "Government verified contact numbers." No part of that phrase applies to a contact field.
- "Fully DPDP-compliant for B2B outreach." No vendor can make that determination for you — you are the one processing the data, and a proprietor's mobile number is personal data regardless of the business label attached to it. See the DPDP checklist.
Entity type decides everything downstream
The single most useful field for an RM is constitution of business, because it determines the documentation path, the decision-maker, the realistic account value and the speed of onboarding.
| Entity | Decision-maker | Onboarding complexity | Typical balance profile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proprietorship | The proprietor, alone | Lightest | Smaller, high volume |
| Partnership | Partners, by deed | Moderate | Variable |
| LLP | Designated partners | Moderate to heavy | Moderate |
| Private limited | Board, via resolution | Heaviest | Larger, slower |
A proprietor can decide on a single call. A private limited company needs a board resolution before an account can be opened at all. Routing both into one calling script wastes the larger opportunity and irritates the smaller one. The document requirements behind each path are in current account KYC by entity type.
Which banks can actually act on this
Not every institution is a buyer, and two categories are structurally excluded:
- Payments banks cannot offer current accounts to companies and cannot lend, and operate under a per-customer deposit cap. They are not a market for this data, regardless of interest.
- Regional rural, cooperative and local area banks have rural and regional mandates, while new registrations concentrate in metros. Poor fit for the segment.
That leaves commercial banks — public sector, private, small finance and foreign — as the realistic universe. The competitive intensity there is visible in the products themselves: ICICI's iStartup, HDFC's startup current account, Axis's New Economy Group proposition and Kotak's video-KYC activation all exist because banks are already spending to acquire exactly these customers.
Worth noting who else is competing: fintech platforms offering fully digital onboarding are winning newly formed businesses on convenience. For a traditional bank requiring branch presence for KYC, the practical answer is reaching the business earlier, not matching the onboarding experience — which is what makes data lag the binding constraint. That is covered in the timing window in current account acquisition.
What to measure
Do not evaluate a lead source on record count. Measure:
| Metric | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Contactable rate | Fill rate × correct-number rate. Drives RM time per account |
| Median registration age at delivery | Your real position in the queue |
| Meetings per 100 leads | Message and targeting fit |
| Accounts opened per 100 leads | The only number that justifies the spend |
| Cost per account opened | Compare against your other acquisition channels |
| Balance and cross-sell at 90 days | Whether you are acquiring value or volume |
Run the 12-point data quality audit on any sample before purchase, and insist on a short first term so you can measure conversion before committing to an annual contract.
Common questions
Is a current account legally mandatory for a new company? No. It is practically unavoidable for the reasons above, but there is no statute requiring it. Pitch it accurately.
Why not just buy MCA incorporation data? Buy it — it is genuinely useful, and it carries directors and capital that GST does not. It simply cannot see proprietorships and partnerships, which is most of the branch-banking opportunity.
Do these leads include the owner's phone number? Not from the GST register, which publishes none. Any contact field is enrichment from another source, and you should know which one.
Which entity type is the best target? Proprietorships convert fastest and in the highest volume; private limited companies carry larger balances and longer cycles. Most branches need both, worked differently.
How fresh does the data need to be? Fresh enough to reach the business before the account is opened elsewhere — which is a number you should measure on your own funnel rather than accept from a vendor. The method is in the timing window guide.