Where India's businesses are being born: what two lakh new companies in 2026 tell us

India registered 2,04,754 companies and 89,199 limited liability partnerships between 1 January and 30 September 2026. The two lakh mark for companies was crossed on 25 September. At the September pace, 24,325 companies in the month and 1,013 for every working day, a new company is registered roughly every two minutes, and a new company or LLP every 74 seconds.

Those are the headline numbers from our Business Birth Rate Index, which we build each month from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs' incorporation files and publish on the fifth. The detailed state pages and the monthly archive are on the index itself; what follows is the longer reading of the first nine months of 2026.

How many companies are registered in India every month?

Between January and August 2026 India registered about 22,550 companies and 9,800 LLPs a month. September was stronger: 24,325 companies and 10,877 LLPs, which took the index to 102.0 against a base of 100 for the January to August average. LLP registrations have run at a little under half the company count every month this year.

The year started fast. January 2026 was 38.7 percent above January 2025. March was up 5.5 percent, April was down 8.6 percent against a record April 2025, and May was up 5.5 percent again. The financial year to March 2026 had already been a record, with about 2.48 lakh companies registered, 36.8 percent more than the previous year, so 2026 is growing on a high base.

A fire at the Ministry's data centre on 5 June 2026 stopped the portal for three days; no company was incorporated on 5, 6 or 7 June, and July carried the catch-up. Anyone comparing June 2026 with June 2025 should know why it looks weak.

Which states register the most companies?

Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka and Telangana, in that order, by volume. By registrations per head of population, Delhi leads by a wide margin and Telangana, Haryana and Goa lead among the states.

Among the states, September kept the order at the top: Maharashtra 3,921, Uttar Pradesh 2,676, Telangana 1,731. Delhi, which the index counts separately as a union territory, registered 2,000 companies in the month, which at 91.9 per million people is more than double the rate of any state. Among the states, Telangana registered 45.2 companies per million in September, Haryana 42.4 and Goa 40.4. Across the first eight months Delhi registered 691 companies per million residents; Bihar registered 50.

Uttar Pradesh's second place runs against the usual picture of company formation as a southern and western phenomenon. The Hindi-speaking states together accounted for 39 percent of new companies in the first eight months. Western Uttar Pradesh, the seventeen districts around Noida and Ghaziabad that now have their own Registrar of Companies, registered about 1,308 companies a month between March and August, more than Pune and more than Mumbai city.

That last comparison is possible because of a change made in February. On 16 February 2026 the Ministry split several Registrar jurisdictions. Delhi now has two Registrars. Maharashtra has four: Mumbai city and suburbs; a Mumbai-II office for Thane, Palghar, Raigad, Nashik and five other districts; Pune; and Nagpur for Vidarbha and seven Marathwada districts. Uttar Pradesh has a second Registrar at Noida for its western districts, and West Bengal a second one for the state outside Kolkata. The code in a company's corporate identification number now tells you which of these offices it belongs to, and the offices are where notices, inspections and strike-off proceedings come from.

Read at that level, the monthly league table for March to August looks like this: Karnataka 1,646 companies a month, Telangana 1,599, Gujarat 1,420, western Uttar Pradesh 1,308, Haryana 1,180, Pune 1,144, the Thane and Navi Mumbai belt 1,021, and Mumbai city 1,008. The Registrars at Bengaluru and Hyderabad, which cover the whole of Karnataka and Telangana, are each registering more companies than Mumbai city and its suburbs. Pune on its own is close behind Mumbai, and the belt across the creek from Mumbai has overtaken it.

Two smaller states register far more companies than their size suggests. Haryana registered 9,559 companies in eight months and 42.4 per million people in September, second among the states. Goa, with about 15 lakh residents, registered 40.4 per million in September, third. Tamil Nadu, by contrast, sits sixth by volume with 12,544 companies in eight months, behind Telangana, which has about half its population.

What kind of entities are founders choosing?

Private limited companies, overwhelmingly, but with two shifts under way: LLPs are taking a growing share of all new entities, and Section 8 companies are being formed at almost twice the pace of two years ago.

Of the companies registered between January and August, 85.4 percent were private limited companies, 7.4 percent were Section 8 companies, 5.9 percent were one person companies, and the remainder were public, government and foreign-owned companies. In absolute terms that is 13,405 Section 8 companies in eight months, about 1.8 times the FY24 monthly pace. A Section 8 company is one licensed to pursue charitable, educational or social objects without paying dividends; it carries the same annual filings as any other company, plus the income tax registrations that make donations to it deductible, which our article on Lijjat Papad and non-company structures describes. September reversed a little, with our non-profit sub-index falling 12.7 points, so the trend deserves watching before anyone draws a conclusion. One person companies, at 5.9 percent, numbered about 10,600; the form remains a niche choice for solo founders who want limited liability without a second shareholder. Separately, 69 foreign companies registered a place of business in India during the eight months. Those are branch, liaison and project offices of overseas companies, which file under Section 380 of the Companies Act instead of incorporating, and they are a different thing from the foreign-owned Indian subsidiaries counted below.

LLPs were about 24 percent of new companies-and-LLPs combined in FY24, 26 to 28 percent through FY26, and 30.3 percent in calendar 2026. One new business entity in every three or so is now an LLP, and in some sectors the share is far higher: 54 percent of new real estate entities are LLPs, which makes sense for a sector built on project-specific vehicles with a handful of partners and no plan to raise venture capital. Our LLP sub-index rose 4.3 points in September to 105.

Foreign-owned companies, which we identify by the FTC and FLC categories in the corporate identification number, numbered 1,443 between January and August, about 180 a month, and 34 percent of them were in information technology. The foreign entry sub-index rose 2.7 points in September to 108. These are overseas groups setting up Indian subsidiaries, the opposite movement to the reverse flips described in our article on startups moving their parent companies home.

What do the new companies do?

Information technology is the largest and fastest-growing sector; solar power, e-commerce and pharmaceutical wholesale also grew.

The IT share of new companies rose from 14.1 percent at the start of the year to 16.2 percent by August, and the tech sub-index was at 109.1 in September, up 4.8 points.

Between January and August, 2,887 companies were registered with electricity generation from solar as their stated activity. In September the power and renewables sector was the sector of the month, with 690 new companies and a sub-index of 121.7, and the green sub-index jumped 15 points to 116.8. A great many of these are single-project vehicles for rooftop and ground-mounted plants, which is what a subsidy-driven, project-financed sector produces, and each of them is a company with a full compliance calendar.

E-commerce accounted for 3,132 new companies in eight months, and pharmaceutical wholesale for 2,148. Drug distribution in India is being re-formed at the rate of nearly 270 new companies a month, which suggests that wholesale licences, GST credit chains and the formal structure that hospitals and chains demand are pulling what used to be proprietorships into companies.

3,122 companies registered between January and August used "AI" in their names. The AI-named share of all new companies rose from 1.15 percent in January to 1.67 percent in August, a small share growing about 45 percent in eight months. The register does not show whether the name matches the activity.

What is the calendar for the class of 2026?

Every company incorporated in 2026 now has deadlines that depend on its incorporation date, and the data lets us count the cohorts.

The first clock is the declaration of commencement of business, Form INC-20A, due within 180 days of incorporation under Section 10A of the Companies Act 2013. As of late September, 66,609 companies registered in 2026 had passed day 180, 21,639 more had the deadline within 30 days, and 61,933 within 90 days. A company that misses it faces a ₹50,000 penalty, ₹1,000 a day on each officer up to ₹1 lakh, and a specific ground for strike-off.

The second is the first financial year. Under Section 2(41) of the Companies Act, a company incorporated on or after 1 January closes its first financial year on 31 March of the following year, so every company registered in 2026 shares a first year end of 31 March 2027. Its first annual general meeting is due within nine months of that, by 31 December 2027, with the audited accounts in Form AOC-4 within 30 days of the meeting and the annual return in Form MGT-7A within 60 days.

The third is income tax, and it is where the two statutes diverge. The Income-tax Act has no equivalent to the fifteen-month first year. For the 69,725 companies incorporated between January and March 2026, the period from incorporation to 31 March 2026 is a previous year in its own right, with a return due on 31 October 2026, which the CBDT extended to 21 November 2026 for assessees with the 31 October date. Practitioners disagree about whether a company that had not begun business by 31 March must file; our advice is to file a nil return rather than argue the point with a notice.

Add the first auditor appointment within 30 days of incorporation, the first board meeting within 30 days, and DIR-3 KYC for every director by 30 September each year, and a company registered on a Tuesday in March has eight distinct deadlines before it has sold anything.

What the data says to a founder

Choose the entity for the business you are building. The real estate sector's 54 percent LLP share and the venture-backed sectors' near-total preference for private limited companies are both rational. An LLP has no statutory audit until turnover crosses ₹40 lakh or contributions cross ₹25 lakh, no board meetings, no share capital rules and no equity to sell. A private limited company has all of those and, in exchange, can issue shares to investors and options to employees.

Know which Registrar you belong to. After the February 2026 split, a company in Thane, Nashik or Noida deals with a different office from one in Mumbai or Delhi, and the office's code is in its CIN.

Treat the calendar as part of the product. The 66,609 companies past day 180 of their INC-20A clock and the 69,725 with a tax return due in November are the clients who will call in December. The compliance obligations of a new company are front-loaded, known in advance and cheap to meet on time.

About the data

The Business Birth Rate Index is built from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs' monthly reports of companies, foreign companies and LLPs incorporated through the MCA portal. Each company is placed in a state or union territory by the Registrar code in its corporate identification number; LLP records carry no state. The index divides a month's company registrations by its working days (a weekday counts as one, a Saturday as half) and sets the January to August 2026 average of 994.1 a day at 100. Sector groups are built from the NIC code in the CIN and from company names, and we publish the mapping so that anyone can check or challenge it. Year-on-year comparisons use the Ministry's monthly statistics for 2025. Regional comparisons start from March 2026 because the Registrar split took effect in February.

Frequently asked questions

How many companies were registered in India in 2026?

2,04,754 companies and 89,199 limited liability partnerships were registered between 1 January and 30 September 2026, according to Ministry of Corporate Affairs incorporation data. India passed two lakh companies for the year on 25 September 2026.

Which Indian state has the most company registrations?

Maharashtra, with 29,708 companies in January to August 2026 and 3,921 in September. Uttar Pradesh is second and Delhi third by volume. Per head of population Delhi leads, followed among the states by Telangana, Haryana and Goa.

What percentage of new businesses in India are LLPs?

In calendar 2026, 30.3 percent of new companies and LLPs combined were LLPs, up from about 24 percent in FY24. In real estate, 54 percent of new entities are LLPs.

How many Section 8 companies are registered in India each year?

13,405 Section 8 companies were registered between January and August 2026, about 7.4 percent of all new companies and roughly 1.8 times the monthly pace of FY24.

What is the Business Birth Rate Index?

It is a monthly index published by BizExpress that measures new company registrations in India per working day, with the January to August 2026 average set at 100. It is built from Ministry of Corporate Affairs incorporation files and includes state pages, sector sub-indices and a monthly archive. The September 2026 reading was 102.0.

What must a company incorporated in 2026 file first?

Form INC-20A, the declaration of commencement of business, within 180 days of incorporation; the appointment of its first auditor within 30 days; and its first board meeting within 30 days. Its first financial year ends on 31 March 2027, with the first annual general meeting due by 31 December 2027. Companies incorporated between January and March 2026 also have an income tax return for the period to 31 March 2026 due in November 2026.

Sources

Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Monthly Company (Indian and Foreign) and LLP incorporation reports, January to September 2026; MCA notifications S.O. 4850(E) of 23 October 2025 and S.O. 6112(E) on the Registrar jurisdiction split effective 16 February 2026; Companies Act 2013, Sections 2(41), 10A, 96, 92, 137 and 139; BizExpress Business Birth Rate Index, September 2026 release and methodology note; CBDT Circular 07/2026 on the extension of due dates for assessment year 2026-27.