FSSAI in 2026: Basic, State or Central? The New ₹1.5 Crore / ₹50 Crore Lines, Settled

If you have searched for the FSSAI turnover limit this year, you have met two different answers. One page says Basic Registration stops at ₹12 lakh. The next says ₹1.5 crore. Both sound sure of themselves.

Here is the settled position. The ₹12 lakh line is dead. From 1 April 2026, Basic Registration runs up to ₹1.5 crore of annual turnover, a State Licence covers the band above that up to ₹50 crore, and a Central Licence applies above ₹50 crore. Renewals are gone too. If an older guide tells you to pick a validity of one to five years and diarise the renewal, it is describing a system that no longer exists.

I have set out below exactly which documents changed the law, where your business sits under the new lines, and what happens to a licence you already hold. Our service page carries the same framework in its section on what changed in April 2026, and this post walks through the reasoning behind it.

The three documents that changed everything

Nothing here rests on a consultant's summary. Three papers from FSSAI itself did the work.

The first is the Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Amendment Regulations, 2026, notified in the Gazette on 10 March 2026. That amendment rewrote the validity rule and opened the door to revised thresholds. The second is FSSAI's Order dated 13 March 2026, which set the new turnover lines with effect from 1 April 2026. The third is the one I would read if you read nothing else: FSSAI's own FAQs on the Amendment Regulations, issued on 27 March 2026, which answer the migration, fee and validity questions in plain terms.

The new thresholds apply to applications made on or after 1 April 2026. Existing businesses were given time to migrate through FoSCoS, and that migration is automatic, about which more below.

The new lines, old against new

Read the middle row slowly, because it surprises people. A café doing ₹90 lakh a year, a tiffin service doing ₹40 lakh, a small pickle maker doing ₹1.2 crore — all of them now sit in Basic Registration, provided their kind of business follows the turnover bands. Under the old lines, every one of them needed a State Licence, the full Form B, the inspection, the wait.

That is a real change in daily life. A home baker who was technically over the ₹12 lakh line for two years, trading on a registration that no longer matched her turnover, is very likely compliant today without lifting a finger — her tier came down to meet her. I meet founders in exactly that spot, quietly anxious about a gap they no longer have.

Turnover is the first test. It is not the only one.

Now the part that catches people out. The bands above govern most businesses, but the Kind of Business matrix on FoSCoS — the eligibility document FSSAI updated on 1 April 2026 — places some activities in the Central Licence at any turnover. No restriction on turnover, in the matrix's own words. If you do any of these, your turnover does not save you:

• Importing food into India, or exporting as a manufacturer or merchant-exporter, including a 100% export-oriented unit
• Running an e-commerce food platform
• Making proprietary food, nutraceuticals or health supplements, non-specified foods, Ayurveda aahara, or using radiation processing of food
• Running food activities at an airport or seaport, or on the premises of a Central Government agency
• Operating from a head office that covers food businesses in two or more states
• Running a hotel rated five-star or above

Think of it like a driving licence. The size of the vehicle matters, and so does what the vehicle is. A small importer is still an importer, in the same way that a small truck still needs the truck licence. Turnover measures your size. Your activity decides the class. You need both answers before you file.

Two clarifications worth stating plainly, because older pages get both wrong. Hotels up to four-star follow the turnover bands like everyone else; only five-star and above is Central by category. And under the revised matrix, restaurants, dhabas and clubs also follow the bands — a restaurant under ₹1.5 crore registers, it does not take a State Licence. Caterers are the exception here, and it catches small caterers out. The revised matrix gives caterers no Basic Registration tier at all: a caterer takes a State Licence at ₹5,000 a year for turnover up to ₹50 crore, and a Central Licence above ₹50 crore, however small the business is. Mid-Day Meal caterers sit in the same position. If you cater, even on a small scale, do not file Basic Registration and assume you are covered — you are not. Pages still telling a small restaurant it needs a licence regardless of turnover are working from the pre-April matrix.

One caution rides with the lighter tier. If you make dairy products, meat, packaged drinking water, infant food or fishery products, FSSAI's FAQs say the hygiene, safety and testing duties stay exactly where they were, even if your business now sits in Registration. The paperwork got lighter for high-risk food. The standards did not.

Renewals are gone. Read that sentence twice, then read this one.

Under the substituted Regulation 2.1.7, a licence or registration now stays valid unless it is suspended, cancelled or surrendered. There is no expiry date. There is no renewal application. Applications that were mid-way through the system also pick this up — anything issued on or after 1 April 2026 carries perpetual validity.

But the annual fee survived, and this is where businesses will trip. You still pay your tier's fee every year, and FSSAI's FAQs confirm you may pay for any number of years at once, at any time of the year. If you do not pay, Regulation 2.1.7 treats the licence as deemed suspended. Not expired with a grace period. Suspended. And trading on a suspended licence puts you back in the territory of Section 63 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 — carrying on a food business without a licence is punishable with imprisonment of up to six months and a fine of up to ₹5 lakh.

So the honest summary is this: the renewal form died, the payment did not. Put the fee in your calendar the way you would a tax date. Paying three or five years in one go is allowed, and for a small business at ₹100 a year it is the cheapest peace of mind in Indian compliance.

You already hold a licence. What happens to it?

Probably nothing you need to chase. FSSAI's FAQs answer this set of questions directly:

• Migration to the new category happens automatically at the back end of FoSCoS, based on your self-declared turnover. It needs no approval from the licensing authority.
• No fee is charged for migration caused by the revised thresholds.
• If you paid for a State Licence and now belong in Registration, the fee you paid is adjusted against your registration fee.
• Your 14-digit licence number does not change when your category changes.
• The licensing authority for your business does not change either — the 13 March Order left jurisdictions untouched.

FSSAI also notes, in the same FAQs, that more than 98% of food businesses now fall under State Government purview for monitoring and inspection. That is the design of the reform: Delhi keeps the high-risk and cross-border end, and the states watch everyone else.

Street vendors, and the inspection change

Street food vendors, hawkers, food carts and food trucks registered under the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 are now deemed registered under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. No second registration. No second fee. The dual-compliance complaint that vendors carried for years is answered. What has not been waived is hygiene — the Schedule 4 sanitary requirements still apply in full, and an inspecting officer can still act on them.

Inspections have changed for everyone else too. FSSAI has moved to a computer-assisted, risk-based system that weighs your compliance history during enforcement and surveillance, your self-compliance testing, and third-party audit results. A business with a clean record should see fewer inspections. A repeat offender should expect more. In other words, your file now remembers, so keep it clean.

Why you keep reading ₹12 lakh

Because the internet does not update itself. Thousands of pages were written against the 2011 framework and never revisited — including, honestly, older explainers in many firms' blog archives. Our own earlier post on FSSAI registration versus licence was written under the old lines; read it for the registration-versus-licence distinction, and read this post for the numbers. Where a page gives you ₹12 lakh, 1-to-5-year validity or a renewal date, check its date. If it predates April 2026, it is history, not guidance.

Settle your own position in this order. Take your annual turnover and find your band. Then check your activity against the Central list above and the Kind of Business matrix on FoSCoS. Then, if you already hold a licence, confirm on FoSCoS that the migration shows correctly and that your annual fee is paid. Ten minutes, three checks, no guessing.

If the activity check leaves you unsure — and importers, platforms and multi-state sellers genuinely sit in grey corners — get the tier confirmed before you file, because a wrong-tier application costs you the fee and the weeks. You can start with the tier framework on our FSSAI registration and licensing service page and have the category mapped against your actual business before anything goes to the portal.