Udyam Registration
Online — Made Simple.

It’s the Government of India’s official way of recognising you as a small or medium business. The MSME Ministry launched it in July 2020 to replace the old Udyog Aadhaar system. Once you’re done, you have a permanent registration number (URN) and a downloadable certificate. That’s what gets you into the schemes — CGTMSE for collateral-free loans, priority slots in government tenders, and the 45-day buyer payment rule you’ll actually want to use.

Yes, all the same thing. The official spelling is Udyam — that’s what shows on the portal and on the certificate. But people type what they hear, so you’ll see Udhyam, Udyaam, Udyom, Udayam all over the place. None of these are separate schemes. They all point to the same Ministry of MSME system that launched in July 2020. Whichever spelling you searched, you’ve landed in the right place.

Not in the sense that you’ll be fined for skipping it. But every MSME-only benefit — the 45-day buyer payment rule, CGTMSE collateral-free loans, the 25% reserve in central government tenders, scheme subsidies under PMEGP and CLCSS — is locked behind a URN. So if you ever want to apply for any of these, you need to be registered first. For a business that’s serious about growing, it’s effectively required.

No. The Government of India charges nothing. The MSME Ministry issues the certificate free at udyamregistration.gov.in. Any fee paid to a private consultant covers advisory and filing time, not a government charge. Any website telling you the government itself wants a registration fee is misleading you.

Not at all. Manufacturers, service providers, retailers, wholesale traders, e-commerce sellers, and freelance professionals all qualify. So do most legal structures — Proprietorship, Partnership, HUF, Pvt Ltd, Public Ltd, LLP, Cooperative Society, Trust, and Section 8 companies. The proprietor or authorised signatory just needs an Aadhaar with a working linked mobile, plus a PAN. Retailers and wholesale traders, by the way, were only included from July 2021. Older articles you might find online still say they aren’t eligible, but that’s out of date.

Lifetime. No renewal. The certificate stays active as long as your business fits within the Micro, Small, or Medium thresholds. The system automatically updates which bracket you’re in once a year, based on your latest ITR and GST returns, but the certificate itself never expires. The only time you’d need to touch it is if your business details actually change — see our Edit Certificate service for that.

Two different things, two different timings. The URN itself is issued the moment you confirm the final OTP — usually 10 to 15 minutes from start if your Aadhaar, PAN, and bank details are aligned. The PDF certificate, with the QR code and signature, can take anywhere from a few hours to two working days. The system is doing background cross-checks against your PAN, GST, and Income Tax records during that window. The URN is valid the moment it’s issued, by the way; you don’t have to wait for the PDF to use it.

You can start the application without one, but you can’t finish it. The portal asks for an account number and IFSC before final submission. Proprietorships are fine with a personal savings account. Partnerships, LLPs, and companies should use a current account in the entity’s name — that’s what banks and schemes expect when they later send you money. If you skip bank details, none of the subsidy or TReDS flows work for you afterwards.

One PAN, one URN. The portal treats one PAN as one enterprise. If you’re a proprietor running two or three small businesses on the same PAN, you don’t need separate registrations — add a secondary NIC code for each additional activity and you’re covered. To get separate URNs, you need separate PANs. For example, a partnership firm’s PAN is a different number than the partners’ personal PANs, so the partnership gets its own URN.

Easy enough. Log into the portal, go through the edit flow, and add the new 5-digit NIC code as a secondary activity. Your original URN doesn’t change. This comes up a lot — a manufacturer who starts also trading, or a service business that opens up a small retail line. The guide to adding a second business activity has the step-by-step, or the Edit Certificate service handles it for you if you’d rather not deal with the portal.

You go through the portal. Log in with your URN and registered mobile, find the cancellation option, and submit with a reason. Most businesses don’t actually have to cancel; the certificate doesn’t impose any compliance burden if you stop operating. But if you’re formally winding up — filing closure documents with the Registrar of Companies, for example — you’ll want to cancel the URN as part of that process. Otherwise, leaving it dormant is harmless.

Both numbers — investment in plant and machinery (or equipment) and turnover — have to fit the bracket. Under Budget 2025–26: Micro is up to ₹2.5 crore investment plus up to ₹10 crore turnover. Small is up to ₹25 crore investment plus up to ₹100 crore turnover. Medium goes up to ₹125 crore investment plus up to ₹500 crore turnover. Either number going over moves you to the next bracket. The full breakdown is in the classification table at the top of this page.

No, and this is deliberate. Export earnings are kept out of the turnover figure that decides your bracket. The reasoning is to support export-led growth: an MSME that does well selling overseas shouldn’t get pushed into a higher bracket and lose status just because of foreign-currency revenue. Only domestic turnover counts. Investment in plant and machinery, however, is counted at purchase value no matter what you make with it.

The reclassification is automatic; it happens the moment the bigger number hits your filed ITR or GST returns. Once you cross either threshold (₹125 crore investment or ₹500 crore turnover), you’re out of MSME territory and scheme eligibility stops. Your URN stays on record but no new CGTMSE, PMEGP, or similar applications will be approved. The good news: nothing gets clawed back from past benefits. You just don’t qualify going forward.

Yes, both are possible. A DPIIT-recognised startup that also fits MSME thresholds can hold both registrations and claim from both schemes. This combination is common — an early-stage product company using Startup India’s tax holiday on top of an MSME-backed CGTMSE loan, or a small services firm taking Startup India’s patent fee rebate plus MSME priority in government tenders. They’re separate schemes with separate portals, so you’ll register on each one independently.

The system is matching your PAN name and DOB against what’s on your Aadhaar. If even a single character is off — Rajesh K Sharma on one, Rajesh Kumar Sharma on the other — it fails. Five common causes show up in roughly this order: spelling variation, initial vs full name, name change after marriage, DOB typo, and PAN not being linked to Aadhaar at all. Each has a different fix. Our PAN mismatch fix guide walks through them.

The OTP only goes to whatever number is linked to your Aadhaar at UIDAI. If you haven’t checked that link in a few years, there’s a good chance it’s still pointing at an old SIM you don’t use anymore. The fix is a trip to the nearest Aadhaar enrolment centre with your Aadhaar; biometric verification is required, but the new mobile is usually active within a few hours. Then retry the OTP.

Most of what’s on the certificate can be edited later: business address, bank details, activity codes, contact mobile, company name. The exception is structural changes like moving from a proprietorship to a partnership, which usually need a fresh registration rather than an edit. Our Edit Certificate service handles the routine edits (address, NIC code, bank details, name spelling, social category) end-to-end if you’d rather not deal with the portal yourself.

Any time. Go to udyamregistration.gov.in, plug in your URN and registered mobile, confirm via OTP, and download. No charge, no limit on how many times you can do it. If you’ve also forgotten the URN, our Forgot Udyam service helps you recover it using your Aadhaar. Once you have the URN, you can pull fresh copies whenever a bank, tender, or compliance filing asks for one.