A franchise agreement is for a business that hands over its brand, its operating system and its supply terms to someone else who runs an outlet under that name. If you are appointing a reseller, or licensing a logo and nothing beyond it, you are not franchising. Those deals need a distribution or a licence document, and the two sets of clauses are not interchangeable. Draw that line before anybody drafts a word. Everything below assumes you have drawn it, and that at least one side of the table sits in Pune.
What has to be settled before the drafting starts?
Five commercial decisions shape the whole document, and not one of them is legal work.
- Territory: a single outlet, a named locality such as Kharadi, or an entire taluka.
- Term: how many years it runs, and whether renewal is automatic or has to be earned on performance.
- Money: the joining fee, the royalty base, the payment date and who funds marketing.
- Brand: which marks the franchisee may use, on what, and what she may never do with them.
- Exit: notice, cure period, and what happens to stock, staff and premises on the last day.
Settle those on one call and the draft follows in days. Leave them open and every revision reopens the negotiation instead of closing it. For the law behind each limb, read the national franchise agreement guide alongside this page.
Does your Pune arrangement really call for a franchise document?
The document earns its fee where somebody else runs the business under your name. In practice that means:
- A corporate services office in Kharadi, itself sitting on leave and licence premises, opening a second branch through a local operator rather than through staff.
- A Hinjawadi founder taking a proven service model into other cities under one brand and one playbook.
- A Koregaon Park restaurant group adding outlets it will fund and supply but never own.
Plenty of businesses are sold this document and do not need it. A commission agent is an agency arrangement. Somebody who buys your goods and marks them up is a distributor. A branch manager on your payroll is an employee, whatever the offer letter calls him. Each of those has a document of its own, and dressing one up as a franchise imports duties nobody at the table intended.
Which authority issues it, and does the outlet answer to PMC or PCMC?
Nobody issues a franchise agreement. It is a private contract, so there is no registrar, no application form and no approval to wait for. What the outlet itself needs does turn on its address.
- Inside Pune Municipal Corporation limits, an eating house, a sweetmeat shop or a barber's shop is a licensable trade under section 376 read with Chapter XVIII of Schedule D of the Maharashtra Municipal Corporations Act 1949.
- PCMC works under that same Act, so a Wakad or Bhosari outlet deals with Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation on identical terms.
- A Camp outlet sits in Pune Cantonment, where the licence comes from the Cantonment Board under section 277 of the Cantonments Act 2006 and applications run through eChhawani.
- Hinjawadi, Chakan and Talegaon are MIDC notified industrial areas lying outside both corporations, so we confirm the licensing body from the address first.
An office, a software company or a consultancy appears nowhere on that schedule and needs no such licence, and nobody should sell you one. The Shops and Establishments filing is a separate matter, and it goes to the state Labour Department's Facilitator in every one of those areas. Name in the agreement which party carries each of these. Otherwise the point gets settled during a first inspection, at the worst possible moment.
What does the drafting cost, and which clauses have to be in it?
Our fee is ₹9,999 for a full agreement built to your model, with one revision round and delivery in 3 to 5 days. A master agreement covering many outlets, or an overseas franchisor entering Pune, is quoted separately, because it is the schedules that multiply rather than the clauses. The checklist below is what we work through with you.
| Clause | What it has to fix | Who usually carries it |
|---|---|---|
| Territory and exclusivity | The named area, and whether you may open inside it yourself | Franchisor |
| Fee and royalty | Base, rate, due date and interest on a late payment | Franchisee |
| Brand licence | The marks, the permitted use, and what ends on termination | Franchisor |
| Premises | The outlet document, its registration and who pays for it | Franchisee |
| Local licences | Municipal or cantonment permissions and the Shops Act filing | Franchisee |
| Disputes | Seat, the mediation step and the Pune court that hears it | Both |
How we run the drafting from our side
- A call to fix the five decisions above, and to establish which side is the franchisor in law.
- A term sheet in plain language, agreed by both sides before a single clause gets written.
- The draft, with the brand licence and the termination limb written to your marks and your outlet model.
- Your reading, then one revision round, and a second only where the commercial terms have genuinely moved.
- Execution support, covering the duty computation, the signing sequence and the premises document.
How is the agreement stamped, and what does execution need here?
Duty is settled before signature, never after. An instrument executed in Pune is charged under the Maharashtra Stamp Act 1958, and section 10(3) names the Government Receipt Accounting System, GRAS, among the permitted modes of payment, with the e-SBTR route beside it. We compute the figure against the schedule in force on your execution date, because that schedule was amended in 2025 and no honest page quotes you a fixed number for it.
Registration is the other half, and it is a different step. The franchise agreement and the paper for the outlet premises are separate instruments. Section 55 of the Maharashtra Rent Control Act 1999 makes a leave and licence agreement compulsorily registrable in Maharashtra, with the duty falling on the licensor. Your outlet address then decides the office. Haveli No. 1 to Haveli No. 27, the joint sub registrar offices of Pune City, take the city addresses, while Pune Rural has 22 more, so a Chakan or a Talegaon outlet never registers at a Haveli office. e-registration is open to you as well, on software the department piloted in Pune first.
Two more things close the file. The trade mark limb has to match a real registration or a pending application, and for a Maharashtra applicant the office is the Trade Marks Registry at Mumbai, jurisdiction following the principal place of business in India. And the dispute limb has to name a forum that exists. Franchising agreements are one of the categories listed in section 2(1)(c) of the Commercial Courts Act 2015. Maharashtra has specified ₹50,00,000 for the whole State, so a claim at or above that value is a commercial dispute for the Commercial Court at Pune. Where no urgent interim relief is sought, section 12A sends the parties to pre institution mediation first, run through the legal services authority machinery and completed inside three months.
What do we read before writing your franchise clauses?
We are CAs and company secretaries who draft agreements for Pune businesses every week, and who read the outlet address before writing the licence clauses. The fee is fixed, the file runs online, and a callback within 30 minutes is there if you would rather talk it through first. Our Pune office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006, for anyone who prefers to sit across a table. LegalX India has now been used by more than 15,000 businesses. This desk drafts to the Maharashtra position in force on the day you execute, not the one a template carried last year.