India's two large public business registers answer different questions and are not substitutes. GST registration covers every business that crossed a turnover threshold or registered voluntarily — including the proprietorships and partnerships that make up most of Indian commerce — but records only a shallow set of fields. MCA covers companies and LLPs exclusively, a small minority of the business population, but records incorporation history, directors, capital, charges and audited financial filings.
The practical consequence: if you need breadth, GST is the only option. If you need depth on a company, MCA is the only option. Most serious workflows use both, joined on PAN.
Coverage, side by side
| GST register | MCA register | |
|---|---|---|
| Identifier | GSTIN (15 characters) | CIN (21 characters), LLPIN (7) |
| Covers proprietorships | Yes | No |
| Covers partnerships | Yes | No (only LLPs) |
| Covers private limited companies | Yes, if registered | Yes, all |
| Covers LLPs | Yes, if registered | Yes, all |
| Entity population | Very large | Much smaller |
| Registration date | Yes | Yes (incorporation) |
| Registered address | Yes | Yes |
| Directors / partners | No | Yes, with DINs |
| Authorised & paid-up capital | No | Yes |
| Financial statements | No | Yes, as filed |
| Charges (secured lending) | No | Yes |
| Company email address | No | Yes |
| Phone number | No | No |
| Compliance / filing status | Return filing status | Filing status, ACTIVE compliance flag |
| Business activity | Nature of activities | Industry classification |
Two rows deserve emphasis.
Proprietorships. They are absent from MCA entirely. Any dataset built purely on MCA filings — which includes most of the well-known Indian company-data platforms — structurally cannot see them. For a product sold to small traders, service providers and single-owner businesses, that is not a gap at the margins; it is most of the market. Bank liabilities teams sourcing current accounts from MCA incorporation feeds hit this limit hardest — see where current account leads come from.
Company email. MCA publishes a filed email address for companies. GST publishes no contact field at all. This makes MCA the only official Indian source of a business contact point, and it is why serious enrichment pipelines start there. The caveat is that the filed address is often the auditor's or a founder's personal address and may be years out of date.
Decoding the identifiers
GSTIN — state code, PAN, entity number, Z, checksum. Full breakdown in how to find company details from a GST number.
CIN — 21 characters, and each segment is readable:
| Segment | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 character | L listed, U unlisted |
| 5 digits | Industry classification code |
| 2 characters | State of registration |
| 4 digits | Year of incorporation |
| 3 characters | Ownership type — PLC, PTC, FTC, GOI and others |
| 6 digits | ROC registration number |
The year of incorporation sits in the CIN itself, so company age is readable without a lookup. PTC indicates a private limited company; PLC a public one.
The join key is PAN. Positions 3–12 of the GSTIN are the entity's PAN, and MCA records carry PAN too. This is a reliable structural join, unlike name-and-address matching, which is fuzzy and produces false positives.
Which register for which question
| Your question | Register | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Which businesses registered in Pune last month? | GST | MCA misses proprietorships entirely |
| Who are the directors of this company? | MCA | GST holds no director data |
| Is this GSTIN currently active? | GST | Status is a GST field |
| What is this company's paid-up capital? | MCA | Not a GST field |
| Does this company have secured lending against it? | MCA | Charge registry |
| What does this business actually do? | Both | GST nature of activity; MCA industry code |
| Is there an official email for this entity? | MCA | GST publishes none |
| Is this business filing returns? | GST | Return filing status |
| How old is this company? | MCA | Incorporation date; also encoded in the CIN |
A test for any vendor
Ask: "Does your database include proprietorships?" If the honest answer is no, the product is MCA-derived and covers a specific slice of the market well. That is a legitimate product — it is simply not a database of Indian businesses, and the distinction matters if your buyers are small.
Who sells which
- MCA-derived platforms — Zauba Corp, Tofler, Probe42, InstaFinancials. Strong on company financials, directors, charges and filings. Company and LLP universe only.
- GST-oriented tools — ClearTax, Masters India, KnowYourGST, GSTZen. Built primarily for compliance and verification workflows.
- Combined business-data products that join both registers and add enrichment, including FinScreener — built by the team publishing this site, see our disclosure.
- Contact-first platforms — Apollo.io, Lusha, ZoomInfo — strong on contact data at larger companies, thin on the Indian small-business long tail.
A capability-by-capability comparison is in where to buy B2B leads in India.
Using both together
The productive pattern is GST for discovery, MCA for qualification:
- Find candidates in GST by state, registration date, constitution and activity. This is where breadth lives.
- Extract the PAN from GSTIN positions 3–12.
- Join to MCA where the constitution is private limited or LLP.
- Qualify on MCA fields — incorporation date, capital, directors, filing status, charges.
- Route by segment. Proprietorships get a fast, single-decision-maker approach; companies get a process-aware one.
- Verify status in GST at the moment you act, since it changes continuously.
Roughly: GST tells you a business exists and is currently registered. MCA tells you how substantial a company is and who runs it. Neither tells you whether anyone wants your product — that is what the outreach playbook is about.
Common questions
Does every company have both a CIN and a GSTIN? Every company has a CIN. It has a GSTIN only if it registered for GST — not automatic below the thresholds, though most trading companies do register.
Can I get a GSTIN from a CIN? Indirectly, via PAN. MCA records carry the company PAN; the GST portal supports search by PAN and returns registrations across states.
Is MCA data free? Basic master data is viewable on the MCA portal. Filed documents and financial statements involve fees, which is a large part of why commercial platforms exist — they aggregate and normalise what is otherwise a document-by-document retrieval.
Which is more current? GST status changes continuously and is more current on existence. MCA is more current on corporate structure but updates only when the company files, which can be annual.
Why do MCA-based platforms show so few results for small businesses? Because those businesses are not in MCA. A proprietorship never files with MCA and never appears there, regardless of size or revenue.