How to Check Company Details on MCA Before You Buy a Business (2026)

Quick answer: To check company details on MCA before buying a business, run four checks on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs portal: company master data (free), the index of charges (free), director details (free), and filed financial statements through View Public Documents (₹100 per company, free MCA login needed). Together they take about 30 minutes.

Before you spend weeks talking to an owner, spend 30 minutes on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) portal. Most of what you need to know about an Indian private company’s health is public. Its status, its loans, its directors and its filed financial statements are all there, and most of it is free.

This piece walks through the checks in the order to run them, what each one costs, and the red flags that should make you slow down or walk away.

The 30-minute check at a glance

Step 1: Master data (free, no login)

Go to mca.gov.in, then MCA Services, then View Company/LLP Master Data. Search by company name or CIN (Corporate Identification Number).

What to read:

• Status. It should say “Active”. “Under process of striking off”, “Strike off” or “Dormant” are serious warnings.
• Date of last AGM and date of balance sheet. These tell you whether the company is filing on time. If the last balance sheet is more than 18 months old, ask why before anything else.
• Paid-up capital. A useful sense check against what the owner says the business is worth.
• Date of incorporation. Compare it with the history the owner gives you.

The CIN itself tells you a lot. It shows whether the company is listed, its industry code, its state, its year of incorporation and its company type.

Step 2: Index of charges (free)

From the master data page, open the Index of Charges. A charge is a loan or other liability secured on the company’s assets, usually by a bank.

What to read:

• Charge holder and amount. Who has lent against the company, and how much.
• Date of creation and date of satisfaction. A charge with no satisfaction date is still shown as open.

Old charges with no satisfaction date sometimes belong to loans that were repaid but never closed on MCA. Ask for the bank’s no-dues letter. Either way, open charges have to be cleared or carried into the deal before you close.

Step 3: Directors (free)

Open Signatory Details for the current directors, their DIN (Director Identification Number) and their appointment dates. Then use View Director Master Data with each DIN to see every other company that person is linked to.

What to read:

• Recent changes. Directors who resigned shortly before a sale process are worth a question.
• Other companies. A pattern of struck-off or non-filing companies tells you how the owner runs things.
• Disqualification. Under Section 164(2) of the Companies Act, a director of a company that has not filed financial statements or annual returns for three consecutive years is disqualified for five years.

Step 4: Filed documents (₹100 per company)

For the actual numbers, use View Public Documents. You need a free MCA login. Search the company, choose the document category and year, add the documents to your cart and pay ₹100 per company. You can download the documents for a limited time after paying, so save the PDFs straight away.

The documents that matter:

• AOC-4: the financial statements: balance sheet, profit and loss account, notes and the auditor’s report.
• MGT-7 or MGT-7A: the annual return, including the shareholding pattern.
• CHG forms: the details behind each charge in Step 2.
• DIR-12: director appointments and resignations.

Buying an LLP instead of a company? The equivalents are Form 8 (statement of accounts and solvency) and Form 11 (annual return).

What to look for in the AOC-4:

• Revenue and profit over three years. Do they match what the owner told you?
• Related-party transactions in the notes. Large payments to the owner’s family or other companies can inflate costs or hide profit.
• Auditor’s report. Any qualification or “emphasis of matter” deserves a direct question.
• Contingent liabilities. Tax disputes, guarantees and pending cases that are not on the balance sheet yet.
• Borrowings and receivables. Rising debt, or money owed to the company that is not being collected.

Step 5: ZaubaCorp and Tofler as shortcuts

Third-party sites such as ZaubaCorp and Tofler republish MCA master data, charges and director links in an easier format, and some sell financial summaries. They are useful for scanning many companies quickly. Their data is copied from MCA and can be out of date, so confirm anything that matters on the MCA portal itself.

What MCA will not tell you

MCA covers company filings, not everything. Before you sign an LOI, also check:

• GST: the GST portal’s free Search Taxpayer tool shows whether the company’s GST registration is active and whether returns are being filed.
• Court cases: search eCourts and the NCLT for cases against the company and its promoters.
• Property and employees: land records, leases, PF and ESI dues need separate checks. Our due diligence checklist covers them.