You name it: book a name for your company

If you have not read the summary of steps in my November post you can see them here. The third step in that list is to apply to the Registrar of Companies (ROC) for a name for your company.

To avoid any kind of legal confusion, there cannot be two companies with the same name in the country. As a matter of fact, if you wanted to borrow a name from a foreign company you would need to get a NOC (non-objection certificate) from them allowing you to register your company with that name in India.

To apply for a name, and book it temporarily for 6 months (if you have not incorporated your company by then, you will need to apply again) you need to fill up and submit the Form 1A. This is a simple form where no much information is required… the only really relevant information are two things:

First, the DIN (Director Identification Number) of the directors (minimum two) for the proposed company (you can read about this in my previous post)

Second, the proposed names: you will have to give a few options (in case they reject the first one or two) and generally you will have to make it a little longer than a one-word name. For instance, instead of being just “Compusoftex” (just a single name), you would have to call it “Compusoftex solutions” or “Compusoftex networks”, or even longer “Compusoftex networks and solutions”… The idea is that you have to give more than one option and usually you would like to keep the name you have come up with plus adding other words which describe your activity.

While submitting this you will have to pay a fee of Rs.500 and you will get a reply to it after a week or two. Before submitting the form, to make almost sure they want reject it (at least not in the basis of availability) you should check whether the name is available. You can do that at the MCA (Ministry of Company Affairs) web-site: go to “Other Services” on the left-hand-side menu and click on “Check Company Name”. The tool does not work perfectly well, but it is useful: if there is a company which matches the name you have entered, you will get a list; but if there is no company with such name or similar you will not get any result at all, not even a message telling you so.