Miss INC-20A and your Bengaluru company is not allowed to trade or to borrow. That is the position from the day it is incorporated, not a consequence that shows up later. The company carries a penalty of ₹50,000. Every officer in default carries ₹1,000 for each day the default continues, capped at ₹1,00,000. The Registrar also gains a clean ground to strike the name off the register, and nobody has to complain first. The incorporation date sits on MCA V3 and the missing declaration sits next to it.
The correction is small. INC-20A is a single declaration that the subscribers have actually paid for the shares they signed for. It needs a bank statement, a live signature and one form. LegalX India files it for Bengaluru companies from ₹1,499, usually inside 3 to 5 days of the statement reaching us.
Does your Bengaluru company actually have to file this?
One test settles it, and it is a national one. A company with share capital incorporated on or after 2 November 2018 may not start business or use its borrowing powers until this declaration reaches the Registrar, under section 10A of the Companies Act 2013. The state you sit in does not change that. What Karnataka decides is only where the form is read.
- Private limited and public limited companies with share capital, however small the paid up amount.
- One Person Companies, which stand on exactly the same footing as any other company with share capital.
- A company that has been dormant since incorporation and never raised an invoice. The clock still ran.
- Out of scope: entities with no share capital at all, and LLPs, which are not companies and file nothing of this kind.
ROC Bengaluru is the single registrar for the whole of Karnataka, and the MCA also writes the name ROC Bangalore. A registered office in Whitefield, a showroom in Jayanagar or a testing shed near Yelahanka makes no difference to which office reads your form.
What has to be true in your records before we can file?
This is not a form you can talk your way through. It is a statement of fact, certified by a practising professional, and each fact behind it has to exist before the form opens.
- The company's own current account, opened in the company name and not in a founder's personal name.
- The full subscription money against every subscriber in the memorandum, paid from that subscriber's own account, with the credits visible on a statement.
- A registered office already verified on record, so the address the MCA holds matches the agreement or ownership proof in your folder.
- A director with a valid DSC mapped on MCA V3 and an active DIN.
The address is where Bengaluru filings stall, and it is nearly always the same story. The company is incorporated at a coworking desk in Koramangala, because that is the address on the founder's membership. Six weeks later the team takes a floor in HSR Layout, the desk agreement lapses, and the proof stops matching the record. Sort the address notice out first, then file this. A shift inside the same city needs a board decision and a thirty day notice to ROC Bengaluru, not an application to the Regional Director.
How is the 180 day window counted?
From the date of incorporation printed on the certificate. Not from the day the bank account opened, not from the first invoice, and not from the end of the financial year. That one line settles most of the arguments we have with founders.
- Day zero is the incorporation date. Count 180 calendar days forward and diary the 150th, which is where a careful Bengaluru CA puts the reminder.
- The count does not pause while a subscriber delays a transfer, while a DSC is renewed, or while MCA V3 is under maintenance.
- A resubmission after a rejection buys no fresh time at all. The original window keeps running underneath it.
There is no extension to apply for and no grace period built into the form. If the 180th day falls on a Sunday, the declaration still had to be in.
What does a late or missing declaration actually cost?
The money is fixed, and it is not small for a company that has not started earning. The second cost is quieter. A Bengaluru founder raising a seed round hands over a diligence pack, and a missing approval letter reads as a company that was not run properly in its first six months.
| What goes unfiled | Who carries it | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| INC-20A never filed | The company | ₹50,000 |
| INC-20A never filed | Each officer in default | ₹1,000 for every day, capped at ₹1,00,000 |
| No declaration 180 days after incorporation | The company | Registrar may begin removal from the register |
| Trading or borrowing before filing | The company and its officers | Acts done without the power to do them |
If an adjudication order does land, the appeal goes to the Regional Director for the South-Western Region, at Bengaluru, within sixty days of receiving the order. The Registrar can also send someone to look at a registered office where there is reasonable cause to believe no business is being carried on. In a city where a great many companies are registered at a shared desk, that is worth taking seriously.
How does your INC-20A declaration get to approval?
All of it happens on MCA V3. There is no counter to stand at and no stage that needs a visit. ROC Bengaluru sits at Kendriya Sadana in Koramangala, which is useful to know and irrelevant to your filing.
- We read the certificate of incorporation, the subscription table in the memorandum and the days remaining, then tell you the real last date.
- You send the bank statement showing each subscriber credit, the address proof and the DIN list. We flag gaps the same day.
- We draft the board resolution and the declaration, attach the statement, and have the form certified by a practising professional.
- A director signs with a DSC registered on MCA V3, and we file against your CIN, which carries KA for Karnataka in a shape like U72900KA2026PTC123456.
- The SRN comes back, approval follows from ROC Bengaluru, and the approval letter goes into your statutory records where a bank or an investor can find it.
Which Bengaluru companies get caught out most often?
- The Koramangala SaaS founder who incorporated early so a company existed for the seed round, then left the subscription money in a personal account while the term sheet was argued over.
- The aerospace components and testing venture at Yelahanka that spent four months on premises, machines and approvals, and treated the corporate account as a later problem.
- The company whose second director moved abroad, whose DSC expired and whose DIN went inactive in the same month the 180 days closed.
- The founder who began raising invoices from an Indiranagar office in month two and first heard this form's name when a lender asked for the approval letter.
Why file INC-20A through LegalX India in Bengaluru?
We file this form week in and week out for Bengaluru companies, and the failure modes are boring and predictable. A subscription amount that does not match the memorandum. A statement showing one lump sum instead of subscriber by subscriber credits. A signature from a director whose DSC was never mapped. We catch those before the form is built, not after a rejection has eaten a fortnight.
We also tell you what comes next, because this is only the first of the post incorporation filings. A Karnataka company owes a profession tax enrolment certificate, and the auditor appointment and the first annual filings queue up behind it. For the national picture, read the full INC-20A Filing process nationwide. To get it done, send us the certificate of incorporation and the bank statement, and we will tell you today how many days you have left.