IN BRIEF

Asking questions before paying for company incorporation means checking, in writing, what a seller's fee covers before you hand over money — which filings and government charges are included, who handles a rejected name and the forms due after incorporation, who holds your digital signature, and what is refunded if the work stops.

Every week I speak to a founder who has already paid once. The company exists. The certificate is in hand. And yet the bank account is not open, the first auditor was never appointed, and a second professional is now quoting a second fee to finish what the first fee was supposed to cover. Nobody cheated them, exactly. They just never asked what their money was buying.

The short answer: before you pay anyone to incorporate your company, get eight answers in writing — what is included, what government charges sit on top, who handles a rejected name, who files the forms that fall due after incorporation, who holds your digital signature, how long it will take, and what you get back if it goes wrong. Here they are, in the order I would ask them.

1. What exactly is included in this price — and what gets billed later?

Ask for the package in writing, line by line. A complete incorporation job covers Digital Signature Certificates for the directors, the name reservation, drafting your Memorandum and Articles, filing SPICe+ Parts A and B with the linked AGILE-PRO-S form, and handing you the Certificate of Incorporation with PAN and TAN. Then ask the harder half of the question: what is not in this price? GST registration, a current account, trademark filing and first-year compliance are often sold as extras. Extras are fine. Surprises are not. If a seller will not write the list down, that tells you something.

2. Are government fees and stamp duty inside my quote, or on top of it?

Two very different costs hide inside one quote. The first is the professional fee — payment for the person's time. The second is money that goes to the government: the ₹1,000 name reservation fee, plus stamp duty on your Memorandum and Articles. Good news here. The MCA charges no incorporation fee at all when authorised capital stays up to ₹15 lakh. Stamp duty is the moving part, because each state sets its own rate, and it rises with your authorised capital. So ask plainly: is stamp duty included, at what capital, and in which state? A quote that cannot answer that was built to look cheap.

3. Who checks my name and drafts my MoA and AoA?

Your name and your charter documents carry the longest life of anything in this process. Ask who checks the name against the MCA register and the trademark register before filing, and who drafts the object clause in your Memorandum — the paragraph that says what your company may legally do. A copied object clause can box you out of work you win later. Our guide to how to select a company name that gets approved shows the checks a careful filer runs. If the answer is "the portal will tell us," you are paying for trial and error.

4. What happens if my name is rejected or my filing comes back?

Rejection is common. It is not a disaster. What matters is who pays for the next attempt, in money and in days. An approved name stays reserved for 20 days, and the ₹1,000 government fee is gone whether the name clears or not — the MCA does not refund it. Filings also come back marked for resubmission when a document is unclear or a detail clashes. So ask: do you refile without charging me again? How many attempts does my fee cover? And who reads the Registrar's remark and fixes the real cause, instead of sending the same papers back?

5. Who files the forms that fall due after incorporation?

This is the question that saves founders the most money. Incorporation is not the finish line. Think of it as buying a house: the certificate is your sale deed, but the electricity connection and the name on the tax record still need doing after you get the keys. Your company must appoint its first auditor within 30 days, verify its registered office in Form INC-22 if that was left pending, issue share certificates within two months, and file Form INC-20A within 180 days. Our first 30 days checklist after incorporation lists these dates. Ask which of them your fee covers — and get the answer in writing.

6. Who holds my DSC and MCA access — and do I get every document?

Your Digital Signature Certificate is your signature. It sits on a small USB token, it carries a PIN only you should know, and it can sign filings in your name for one to three years, depending on the validity you bought. Never leave that token, or its PIN, sitting in someone else's drawer after the job ends. Ask for physical custody of the token, your DIN details, and a complete set of what was filed: the certificate, the Memorandum and Articles, the PAN and TAN letters, and every challan paid in your name. These papers belong to your company. Not to your filer.

7. How long will this take, and who do I actually speak to?

A straight answer sounds like this: signatures take a day or two, name approval takes a few working days, and the incorporation filing follows once your documents are clean. A vague answer sounds like a promise of "three days total" with no mention of what could slow it down — a name that clashes, an address proof the Registrar cannot read, a subscriber abroad. Ask who your one point of contact is, how you reach that person, and what happens on the day something stalls. Delays happen in honest work too. Silence is the real warning sign.

8. What are your refund terms if this goes wrong?

Ask this before you pay, while asking is still easy. Some money can never come back: government fees and stamp duty, once paid, stay paid, whoever you hired. Professional fees are different, and every honest seller has a position on them. What do you refund if you have not filed yet? What if you filed and I withdraw? What if the delay is at your end? You are not looking for a promise that nothing will go wrong. You are looking for terms written down before they are needed. A seller who answers this calmly, in plain words, is usually a seller who rarely has to use those terms.

Pay slowly. That is my whole advice. Incorporation is a one-time purchase you cannot test-drive, sold by people you may work with for years — so the answers to these eight questions tell you more than any price list can. Write them down, compare two sellers on the same eight points, and choose the one whose answers you could show to your co-founder without embarrassment.

If you want those answers from us, in writing, before you commit to anything, start with our private limited company registration page — it sets out what the work covers, and you can put every one of these eight questions to us and hold us to the reply.