Frequently asked questions

What is CorpIntel and what does it do?

CorpIntel is a free public platform that surfaces and enriches data from India's Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA). It lets you search 2.8M+ Indian companies and 20M+ directors by name, CIN, DIN, state, ROC, industry, or city, and presents each record with analytical signals like address cluster size, director network strength, and lead scoring on top of the raw MCA fields.

Is CorpIntel free to use?

Yes. The public discovery surface — search, company pages, director profiles, category pages, guides, and blog — is free and does not require sign-up. A sign-in layer exists for account features like saved watchlists; programmatic API access may become a paid tier in the future.

How current is the data?

We ingest incremental MCA change events every 24 hours and rebuild the full master table every calendar month. The homepage displays a 'Data last refreshed' timestamp reflecting the most recent successful change-event ingest. MCA data itself is a filing-trailing record, so even our freshest ingest lags real-world events by the time those events take to be filed.

Where is the data sourced from?

Primarily from MCA's public bulk-release feed, cross-checked against the data.gov.in mirror. Full source registry with cadences and licence terms is on the Data Sources page.

What is a CIN?

A CIN (Corporate Identification Number) is the 21-character alphanumeric code assigned by MCA to every Indian company at incorporation. It encodes listing status, NIC industry code, state, year of incorporation, ownership type, and a sequential registration number. Our guide 'What is a CIN?' decodes each segment with an interactive diagram.

What is a DIN?

A DIN (Director Identification Number) is an 8-digit identifier assigned to every individual who wishes to be a director of an Indian company. It is issued for life, is not company-specific, and requires an annual KYC filing (Form DIR-3 KYC) to remain active. Our DIN explainer guide walks through the full workflow.

What does 'Active' status mean on MCA?

'Active' means the ROC has not marked the company for strike-off, amalgamation, dissolution, or any other non-active state. It does NOT mean the company is currently operating. A company can be Active for years while conducting no business, as long as it has not yet been flagged for strike-off. See our 'How to Verify Company Status' guide for a full status taxonomy.

Why is the company's registered address different from its operating location?

Many Indian companies — especially smaller private limited entities — register at a formation-era address (a CA's office, a founder's home, a shared virtual office) and never update MCA when they move operations. Our Data Accuracy page lists this among the specific known-staleness patterns.

What is an address cluster and why does CorpIntel show me one?

An address cluster is a set of companies that share the same normalised registered office address. Clusters fall into three types: legitimate group companies, company-secretary / virtual-office services hosting many clients, and in some cases shell-entity networks run by the same promoter. We display the cluster size and other companies at the same address as a due-diligence signal, not a verdict.

Can I use CorpIntel for legal / credit / investment decisions?

No, not as the sole basis. CorpIntel data is public MCA information with real-world lag, surfaced and enriched for discovery and research. Legal, credit, or investment decisions require independent verification at the MCA portal, direct contact with the company, and a qualified professional advisor. See our Terms of Service and Data Accuracy pages for the full disclaimer.

How do I do basic due diligence on a company using CorpIntel?

A good starting flow: look up by CIN; confirm the company name, incorporation date, ROC, and state match what you've been told; check the status and any flagged notes; scan the director list, filtering by currently-active; check paid-up vs authorised capital for plausibility; look at the address cluster size (a shared virtual office with 400+ companies warrants scrutiny). Our blog has a full due-diligence playbook.

A director shows up on dozens of companies — is that suspicious?

Not necessarily. Many professional directors sit on 10–15 companies legitimately; group-company structures also share directors across entities. What matters is the combination: who those companies are, whether they're active, whether they share addresses with each other, and whether any of them are flagged for strike-off or under dispute. Our director profile pages surface these patterns directly.

How do I find a company if I don't know the CIN?

Use the search bar on the homepage or the dedicated /search page. Search works on company name (full or partial) and CIN. You can also browse by state, ROC jurisdiction, NIC industry code, city, or year of incorporation.

Can I save searches or get alerts when a company changes?

Account features including saved searches and watchlists are available after sign-in. Email alerting for change events is on our roadmap.

Is there a programmatic API?

A paid API tier is on our roadmap. Current public endpoints exist for specific discovery use cases but are not rate-limited or billed. Bulk programmatic scraping is prohibited by the Terms of Service — email us if you need structured programmatic access at scale.

I found an error on a company or director page — how do I fix it?

Email corrections@corpintel.io with the page URL and the specific claim or field you're disputing, ideally with a link to the primary MCA source. Typical response within two working days. Full workflow on the corrections policy page.

Can I get a company or director record removed?

MCA data is public by statute. Accurate records that derive from public filings cannot be removed. We can correct genuine errors, address identity-confusion cases, and suppress specific fields where there's a demonstrated privacy or safety concern.

What personal data does CorpIntel collect about site visitors?

For unauthenticated visitors: aggregate usage data via Google Tag Manager / Analytics (pages visited, referrer, browser, anonymised IP). For registered account holders: email, name, authentication provider, and password hash (if email-password sign-up). Full details on the privacy policy page.

Is my data sold to third parties?

No. We do not sell personal data and do not use it for targeted advertising. Display ads on the site are served by Google AdSense based on Google's contextual and interest-based ad-serving, which operates under Google's privacy framework.

Is CorpIntel affiliated with MCA?

No. CorpIntel is an independent platform. We use data publicly made available by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of the MCA or any Registrar of Companies.

Where is CorpIntel based?

CorpIntel is an India-based platform. Our contact surface, including press and corrections channels, is on the contact page.