Allot shares to a foreign investor and let the thirtieth day pass, and the filing does not just become late. It becomes a contravention, and the way back is a compounding application to the Reserve Bank of India rather than a fresh form. Penalties reach three times the amount involved, and a continuing default adds ₹5,000 a day. Almost every Pune case we open began as a bank credit nobody reported, not as a decision to break a rule.
Does FEMA actually apply to your Pune business?
FEMA follows money across a border, not turnover. There is no threshold to cross first and no certificate to take out before you are covered. If foreign currency has entered your company, left it, or sits in an asset you hold abroad, the Act already applies to you.
A Pune business is usually pulled in by one of these:
- Shares issued to a foreign investor or to an NRI on a repatriable basis
- Shares moved between a resident and a non resident shareholder
- A subsidiary, joint venture or branch office held outside India
- Goods imported against an advance remittance to the supplier
- Services or software exported with the proceeds still to come back
- A loan or a convertible instrument taken from a foreign lender
Two cases slip through more often than the rest. One is the founder who holds a stake through an entity abroad and treats a transfer inside the group as a private matter. The other is a company whose foreign investment arrived years ago and which stopped filing the annual return because nothing new had happened since. Neither assumption survives an investor's diligence.
What goes wrong when a Pune company gets this wrong?
Nothing goes wrong loudly. The money lands, the shares are allotted, and the file stays quiet until somebody outside the company looks at it.
That look arrives from three directions. An investor's counsel runs diligence before the next round and finds an allotment that was never reported. Your authorised dealer bank declines a further remittance until the earlier one is regularised. Or the gap between the inward remittance and the FIRMS record simply surfaces on its own.
The cost then has two halves. There is the compounding amount, which RBI fixes on the nature and the value of the contravention. And there is the waiting, because the transaction in front of you usually stops while the older one is cleaned up.
Which dates and slabs govern these filings?
| Filing | What sets the clock running | Due by |
|---|---|---|
| FC-GPR | Shares allotted against foreign investment | 30 days from allotment |
| FC-TRS | Shares transferred between a resident and a non resident | 60 days from receipt of consideration |
| FLA return | Foreign investment received or overseas investment held on 31 March | 15 July each year |
| ECB-2 | A live external commercial borrowing | Within seven working days of each month closing |
| Annual Performance Report | Each overseas entity you hold | 31 December each year |
Two further dates catch Pune businesses that have never seen a rupee of foreign investment. Export proceeds have to be realised within nine months of the export. An import payment has to be settled within six months. Software and services exports carry Softex forms as well, and STPI's Pune centre inside the Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park at Hinjawadi is the office an exporter here deals with.
How does the Maharashtra layer sit alongside FEMA?
Straight answer: it does not overlap. FEMA is central law administered by RBI, Maharashtra has no version of its own, and there is no state FEMA counter in Pune for you to visit.
What is local is the door and the neighbours. The door is your authorised dealer bank branch, because every FC-GPR, FC-TRS and ECB return reaches RBI through it. The branch holding your current account therefore sets the pace of a Pune file, and a branch that rarely handles foreign investment will ask for more.
The neighbours are the state registrations a Pune entity with foreign money already carries. A Maharashtra GSTIN begins with 27. State GST jurisdiction in Pune is allotted by pincode, so two Pune businesses a few kilometres apart can sit with different nodal divisions and different officers. A Kharadi office and a Baner office are not automatically in the same hands. Pune is also served by two central GST commissionerates, Pune-I and Pune-II, split by taluka and, within Haveli taluka, by pincode. IEC and Foreign Trade Policy benefit applications from Pune route through DGFT's Regional Authority at Pune. The company itself owes profession tax on its own account: that is PTEC, ₹2,500 for the year under Schedule I, and the date is 31 March. PTRC is the other certificate, and it is needed once there is a payroll to deduct from.
What does FEMA compliance cost, and what do you have to supply?
Our FEMA work starts at ₹12,000 and runs 10 to 15 days from the day the papers are complete. Compounding is quoted on the case, because the effort there sits in the computation and the submission rather than in the form.
The document set follows the filing:
- The inward remittance certificate or the advice from your bank
- Board and shareholder resolutions, with the allotment or transfer record
- A valuation certificate that stands against the pricing guidelines
- KYC of the foreign investor, certified by the remitting bank
- Audited financials as on 31 March, for the FLA return and for an APR
- The loan agreement, drawdown schedule and end use note for an ECB
For a compounding file we also need the date the contravention began, the amount involved, and a clean account of how it happened. That narrative is read closely, so it is worth getting right the first time.
Which Pune businesses are filing this?
- A restaurant and cafe group in Koregaon Park that has taken an equity cheque from an NRI investor. FC-GPR runs from the allotment date, the valuation has to hold, and the FLA return then arrives every July whether or not anything has changed.
- A wholesale trading business in Camp buying stock from an overseas supplier against advance payment. The clock to settle the import runs from the goods, and the bank wants evidence of import before it closes the entry.
- A Pune company funded by its foreign parent through a loan instead of equity, which turns the file into an external commercial borrowing with a monthly ECB-2 return rather than a single FC-GPR.
How we run FEMA compliance for you
- We list every foreign currency movement of the last three years against the form it should have produced, and mark what is still open.
- We send one checklist for the remittance advices, resolutions, valuation and investor KYC, and you upload the lot online.
- We register or update your entity on the FIRMS portal, prepare the return, and take your authorised dealer bank's queries directly.
- Where a date has already gone, we compute the exposure, pick the route, and draft the compounding application with its supporting record.
- We hand back the acknowledgments and put the next FLA, APR and ECB-2 dates on a calendar your accountant can actually use.
What does LegalX India do differently on a FEMA file?
We work with Pune companies that have foreign money on the register, and we do not treat FEMA as form filling. The law itself does not change between cities, and how FEMA compliance works across India sets out the RBI machinery in full. What changes locally is the bank branch, the state registrations sitting next to it, and how soon somebody notices a gap.
Our Pune office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006, and the CA and CS team handle the filing end to end online. More than 15,000 businesses have worked with LegalX India, and you get a callback within 30 minutes of asking for one.