Business licensing services in Kolkata

A trade licence from the local municipal authority is the baseline permission to operate from a premises. In the city that means the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, and outside it the relevant municipality or panchayat, each with its own schedule of fees and renewal cycle.

Registration under the West Bengal Shops and Establishments legislation covers working hours, leave and employment conditions for commercial establishments, and professional tax registration follows for both the entity and its employees.

GST registration becomes mandatory once the applicable turnover threshold is crossed, and immediately for interstate suppliers and certain other categories regardless of turnover. Voluntary registration often makes sense earlier where your customers claim input credit.

Food businesses need FSSAI authorisation, which takes the form of basic registration, a state licence or a central licence depending on turnover, scale and the nature of operations, with thresholds the authority has revised in recent years. Getting the tier right at application avoids a rejection and a fresh application.

Manufacturers may need BIS certification with the ISI mark where a product falls under a mandatory certification order, or registration under the BIS Compliance Requirement Scheme for notified electronics and IT goods. Legal metrology registration applies to pre-packaged commodities.

Pharmacies and medical devices require drug licensing, healthcare establishments need clinical establishment registration, and businesses handling waste or emissions need consent to establish and consent to operate from the West Bengal Pollution Control Board.

An Import Export Code from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade is required for goods trade in either direction, and it is a one-time registration linked to your PAN. Exporters typically also want a registration cum membership certificate from the relevant export promotion council to access scheme benefits.

Selling on marketplaces brings its own requirements, and platforms verify GST registration, address proof and category-specific licences before onboarding. Getting these in order before applying avoids weeks of back and forth with seller support.

Where goods are regulated in the destination market, product approvals and testing have to be planned into the launch timeline rather than discovered at the port.

Licences lapse quietly. Trade licences, FSSAI authorisations, pollution consents and drug licences all have their own renewal cycles, and trading on a lapsed licence exposes the business to penalty and, in some sectors, to closure.

We maintain a renewal calendar for every permit we hold on your file, with reminders raised well before expiry so applications go in with time to spare rather than in the week the licence runs out.

We also prepare you for inspections: the records that must be displayed, the registers that must be kept and the documents an inspector will ask to see. Most adverse findings are documentation failures rather than operational ones.