Corporate Identification Number
The registrar of companies allots CIN number to every company registered in India. CIN is Corporate Identification Number and it is typically 21 alphanumeric character, which can be broken into 6 parts to understand the information it contains within it.
The CIN contains the following information within it.
The alphanumeric character of the CIN is represented hereunder, “X” denotes an alphabet and “8” denotes a number.
For a typical company, the CIN shall look like this: X88888XX8888XXX888888. You would have noticed that the CIN generally consist of 6 alphabets and 15 numbers in it.
Let’s take the example of TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LIMITED, The CIN Number allotted to TCS is L22210MH1995PLC084781, you can see that the CIN is an alphanumeric number which can be broken in pieces to understand the information it has within it.
Listing Status:
L: The starting alphabet of a CIN is L, it means the company is listed in at least one stock exchange in India. For instance, in our example of TCS, the first word is L, which means that the company is a Listed Company
U: denotes unlisted company. You may refer to CIN of Flipkart India Private Limited, which is an unlisted company hence the CIN starts with “U” the CIN is U51909KA2011PTC060489
Industry Code: The second part of the CIN is denoted by 5 numbers depicting the industry code as per NIC 2014. For instance, in our example case of TCS, the industry code is 22210 which denotes Printing and service activities related to printing
State: The next is state code in our example of the state is depicted by MH which stands for the state of MaharashtraYear of Incorporation: after the state code we have a four-digit number which depicts the year in which the company is incorporated, you will see in our example that the company TCS was incorporated in the year 1995.
Ownership Information: after the year of incorporation we have three alphabets which depict the type of ownership of the company in the example case it shows PLC which means non-government Public Limited Company.
Following is the list of ownership codes which may be found in a particular CIN
PLC – Non-Government Public Limited
Company
PTC – Non-Government Private Limited Company
OPC – Non-Government One Person Company
SGC – State Government Company
GOI – Union Government Company
GAP – Public Guarantee and Association Company
GAT – Private Guarantee and Association Company
ULL – Non-Government Public Unlimited Company
ULT – Non-Government Private Unlimited Company
FLC – Subsidiary of Foreign Company (Public)
FTC – Subsidiary of Foreign Company (Private)
In the end, you will find six digits in numbers, which depicts the registration number of the company.