When shareholders in a Pune company fall out and nothing was signed, the machinery moves without them. A shareholder claim of specified value is heard by the Commercial Court at Pune, and Maharashtra has fixed that specified value at ₹50,00,000 for the whole State. Below it you are in an ordinary civil suit. Either way, a suit seeking no urgent interim relief cannot be instituted until pre institution mediation has run, and the District Legal Services Authority conducts it. A shareholder agreement settles most of that in advance, while everyone still agrees.
What has to be settled before the drafting starts?
The drafting is quick. The deciding is not. Before a lawyer writes a line, the holders have to close four questions, and all four are commercial rather than legal.
- Who holds what today, in numbers, including any promise made over a call and never written down
- Which decisions need more than a simple majority, and whose signature actually makes them
- What a departing holder is paid for the stake, and who fixes that price
- What happens to shares when a family member dies, divorces or simply wants out
Settle those four and a senior lawyer can draft around them in 3 to 5 days. Leave one open and the document either goes silent or invents an answer nobody agreed to. The third question is dodged most often. A Baner brand owner who has taken angel money at a friendly valuation rarely wants to price her own exit in the same week.
Who here actually needs a shareholder agreement, and who does not?
The document needs shareholders, which is a narrower set of businesses than the phrase suggests.
- A private limited company with two or more holders, once outside money has come in
- A D2C label in Baner that closed an angel round and now carries an outside holder on the register
- A joint venture where a local promoter and an investor each hold a block of equity
- A company opening an ESOP pool, because option shares have to sit inside the existing consent rules
Now the honest correction. A proprietorship in Hadapsar has no shares, so none of this reaches it. A partnership firm needs a deed instead, filed with the Deputy Registrar of Firms at Pune, one of only four submission centres in Maharashtra, covering Pune, Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur, Solapur and Ahilyanagar. An LLP has partners rather than shareholders and runs on an LLP agreement. A single member OPC has one holder and nobody to contract with. We say so on the call rather than sell you a document you cannot use. For the clause by clause treatment that applies everywhere, read our India wide shareholder agreement walkthrough.
Which office touches this agreement, and where would a dispute land?
No office issues a shareholder agreement and no registrar keeps a copy. The company it governs is on the register at ROC Pune, because a registered office in Pune district files there. ROC Pune is the registrar for Pune and the districts around it. The registrar restructuring that took effect on 16 February 2026 left it untouched, so no company here had to lift a finger. We still confirm the registrar for your own address before any filing that follows.
What is genuinely local is the forum. A refused or disputed share transfer is a tribunal matter, and the bench that decides it is NCLT Mumbai, which takes Maharashtra along with Goa. A contractual claim between holders stays here, with the Commercial Court at Pune taking it once the claim crosses that specified value. A writ arising in this district is heard at the principal seat of the Bombay High Court, which is where the court's own jurisdiction table places it. Whether your registered office sits inside PMC at Baner or inside PCMC at Pimpri changes your premises filings, not any of this.
What does the drafting cost, and which clauses carry the weight?
Drafting starts at ₹9,999, and the turnaround is 3 to 5 days once your inputs are in. Multiple share classes, a holder outside India or a live term sheet move the scope, and we quote that before we start rather than after. What you are paying for is the clause set below and the order in which the clauses interact.
| Clause | What it decides | Where a founder loses ground |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer restriction | Who may be offered shares, and on what notice | Left silent, so a stake reaches an outside buyer unopposed |
| Right of first refusal | Whether existing holders match an outside price first | Written with no price and no clock, so nobody can enforce it |
| Tag along and drag along | Whether a minority rides an exit or is carried into one | Only one of the pair drafted, favouring whoever supplied the template |
| Reserved matters | Which decisions need the investor to say yes | Listed so widely that ordinary spending stalls |
| Exit and valuation | What a leaving holder is paid, and who fixes the number | Left to be agreed later, which means agreed by a court |
| Governing law and forum | Which court or arbitration seat hears a dispute | Copied from a template, naming a forum nobody involved uses |
That last row is the one we rewrite most. A template lifted off the internet names a seat with no connection to a Pune company, and the first time it matters is the week you can least afford the argument.
How we draft your agreement from our side
- A short call to map the cap table, the funding stage and the control terms each side actually wants
- A written clause brief you approve before drafting, so nobody meets a surprise on day four
- A senior corporate lawyer drafts against that brief and against your existing Articles of Association
- We walk you through every clause in plain language and take two rounds of changes
- We compute the Maharashtra stamp duty, tell you how to pay it, and set out the execution steps
How is it stamped, executed and kept current in Maharashtra?
Duty on an agreement executed in this State is charged under the Maharashtra Stamp Act 1958, and it is paid electronically through GRAS or by the e-SBTR route before the parties sign. We compute the exact figure against the current schedule rather than print one, because Schedule I was amended in 2025. The department behind all of it sits closer than most founders realise: the Inspector General of Registration and Controller of Stamps for Maharashtra has his office at Pune and is the Chief Controlling Revenue Authority under that Act.
Two things get confused here. The agreement is a private contract between holders and is not registered anywhere, unlike the leave and licence agreement for your own premises, which Maharashtra does require to be registered. And moving shares later is a separate, central charge. Since 1 July 2020, duty on a transfer of securities on delivery basis is 0.015 percent and on an issue of securities 0.005 percent, collected through the depository for demat holdings. The rate people still quote from before that date no longer exists, and nobody is buying physical transfer stamps.
Then keep the document current. It carries no expiry date, but it goes stale the moment the cap table moves. A new investor, an ESOP grant beyond the agreed pool or a single exit is reason enough to reopen it. A Pimpri family manufacturing business that converted from a partnership and has since taken in two outside directors is already working off a document that no longer describes the company.
What makes a Pune shareholder agreement hold up?
The drafting is only half the job. We read your Articles of Association alongside the agreement so the two do not contradict each other, and we name a forum your company can actually reach. Our Pune office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006, and the CA and CS team handle the work online, so a Wakad or Hadapsar holder never travels for it. More than 15,000 businesses have used LegalX India for their corporate documents. Call +91 96356 85435, or request the 30 minute callback and let us say honestly whether a full agreement is what your company needs at all.