CIN Number in India: Format, Example and How to Find Any Company's CIN

A CIN (Corporate Identification Number) is the unique 21-character code the Registrar of Companies (RoC) gives a company when it is incorporated in India. When someone asks for a company's "registration number", the CIN is almost always what they mean.

Every company registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has one. That covers private limited companies, public limited companies, One Person Companies, Section 8 companies, and government companies. The CIN stays with the company for life. It changes only if certain facts encoded in it change (see below).

LLPs, partnership firms and proprietorships do not get a CIN. An LLP gets an LLPIN instead.

A CIN is not random. Each block of characters records a fact about the company. Take this illustrative CIN for a private company registered in Bihar in 2026:

U 62011 BR 2026 PTC 012345

Those six parts add up to 1 + 5 + 2 + 4 + 3 + 6 = 21 characters. If a "CIN" you have been given is any other length, it is not a valid CIN.

So you can learn a lot from a CIN alone. For example, L…MH…PLC… is a listed public company registered in Maharashtra.

1. Open mca.gov.in.
2. Go to MCA Services → Master Data → View Company or LLP Master Data.
3. Type the company name (or the CIN, if you want to verify one) and enter the captcha.
4. Pick the company from the results.

This is also the quickest way to see a company's registration details. The master data page shows the CIN plus the company's status (Active, Strike Off, Under Liquidation and so on), date of incorporation, registered office address, authorised and paid-up capital, and its directors. No login or fee is needed.

Other places to find a CIN without searching:

• The company's Certificate of Incorporation.
• The company's letterhead, business letters and official notices. Section 12(3)(c) of the Companies Act, 2013 requires the CIN to be printed there.
• The footer or "About" page of most company websites.

Checking a company before you sign a deal? Look at the status as well as the CIN. A company marked "Strike Off" or "Under Liquidation" can no longer do business normally.

You do not apply for a CIN separately. It is allotted automatically when the company is incorporated through the SPICe+ form on the MCA portal. It is printed on the Certificate of Incorporation along with the company's PAN and TAN. There is no separate fee.

So the only way to "get a CIN" is to register a company. If you are planning one, TaxQue's private limited company registration and OPC registration services take care of the SPICe+ filing for you. The CIN comes with the certificate.

The CIN changes if any fact it encodes changes. The RoC issues an updated CIN when a company:

• gets listed on a stock exchange, or is delisted (U ↔ L);
• moves its registered office to another state (the state code changes);
• converts from private to public, or from an OPC to a private company (the ownership code changes);
• changes its main business activity (the industry code changes).

Moving the registered office within the same state, or changing the company name, does not change the CIN.

"Business registration number" means different things for different kinds of business:

A sole proprietorship has no registration number of its own. It is usually identified by the owner's PAN plus its GSTIN or Udyam number.

The CIN and the GSTIN are different numbers. A GSTIN is 15 characters and is built around the business's PAN, not its CIN: two-digit state code + 10-character PAN + entity number + "Z" + check character.

The two meet in the GST registration application. A company applies as a company, with its incorporation details and PAN, and those are checked against MCA and Income Tax records. If the legal name in the GST application doesn't match the company's PAN and MCA master data exactly, the application is likely to be queried. So copy the name from the Certificate of Incorporation, character for character.