What Is a Compliance Review?
Running a business in India means complying with a large number of laws simultaneously — corporate law, tax law, labour law, environmental law, data privacy law, sector-specific regulations, and local municipal rules. Each law has its own filing deadlines, registration requirements, display obligations, record-keeping requirements, and penalties for default.
Most small and medium businesses are non-compliant in at least three to five areas at any given time. This is not because the owners are dishonest or deliberately avoiding their obligations. It is because the compliance landscape is genuinely complex: rules are spread across 50+ statutes, updated frequently through notifications and circulars, and there is no single place that tells you "here is everything your type of business must do."
A compliance review changes this. It checks your business — its type, size, sector, location, and number of employees — against the laws that apply to it, and tells you exactly what you are currently doing, what is missing, and what the consequences of continued non-compliance could be.
We use AI compliance tools to run comprehensive, systematic checks across 200+ compliance checkpoints. Our advocate then reviews the findings, verifies them against current law, assesses the severity of each gap, and prepares a clear, prioritised action plan for you.
Laws We Check Against
- Companies Act, 2013 / LLP Act, 2008 — Registered office maintenance, director KYC filings, annual return (MGT-7 / Form 11), financial statement filing (AOC-4), board meeting requirements, statutory registers, commencement of business certificate, share transfer filings.
- GST Act — Registration status, correct category of registration, timely GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B filings, reconciliation with GSTR-2B, e-invoicing applicability, e-way bill compliance, reverse charge mechanisms.
- Labour laws — PF (EPFO) registration and monthly contribution compliance, ESI registration and returns, Shops and Establishments Act registration (Pondicherry), payment of minimum wages, payslip and attendance register maintenance, POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) Act compliance including Internal Committee constitution and annual report, gratuity and bonus obligations.
- Contract Labour Act — For businesses engaging contract workers: principal employer registration, contractor licence, welfare obligations, return filings.
- FSSAI (Food Safety) — For food businesses: registration vs licence threshold, correct licence category, labelling compliance, display of licence at premises.
- Environmental rules — Consent to Establish / Operate under the Air and Water Acts for applicable industries, Hazardous Waste Management rules, Plastic Waste Management rules, CPCB / SPCB compliance.
- Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) — Obligations for businesses collecting or processing personal data: privacy notice requirements, consent management, data fiduciary obligations, data localisation requirements where applicable. See our dedicated DPDP Act Compliance page for more detail.
- Intellectual Property — Whether the business name, logo, and key products are protected by registered trademarks; whether website content is copyright-protected; whether the business is inadvertently infringing third-party IP.
- Local Pondicherry regulations — Puducherry Municipal Council trade licence, building use permissions, signage regulations, local health and sanitation rules applicable to business premises.
The AI + Advocate Process
AI compliance tools are good at breadth — systematically checking a large number of checkpoints quickly without missing anything. What they cannot do is assess context: whether a particular gap is genuinely high-risk for your type of business, whether there is a practical workaround, or what the realistic enforcement risk is in Pondicherry for a specific default.
Our process combines both:
We collect key information about your business: legal structure, date of incorporation, sector and activities, number of employees, turnover range, whether you handle personal data of customers or employees, and whether you have any current regulatory registrations. A short questionnaire or a 20-minute call covers this.
Our AI compliance tools check your business profile against 200+ compliance checkpoints across the applicable laws. The output flags: requirements that are clearly met, requirements that appear to be missing or overdue, and requirements where we need more information to confirm status.
Our advocate reviews every flagged item, verifies it against current law (including recent amendments and notifications), and assesses the practical severity: is this a critical gap that creates immediate legal risk, a moderate gap that should be addressed within a few months, or an advisory item that is good practice but carries lower risk?
You receive a written compliance gap report with a prioritised action plan. Each gap is described clearly, rated for severity, and accompanied by a recommended action and realistic timeline. The advocate is available to discuss the findings and help you implement the fixes.
What You Receive
- Compliance gap report — A structured document listing every compliance area checked, the current status, and the identified gap (if any).
- Risk rating for each gap — Each identified gap is rated as: Critical (creates immediate legal exposure — regulatory action, prosecution, or financial penalty possible), Moderate (should be fixed within 1-3 months), or Advisory (good practice, lower enforcement risk, lower urgency).
- Recommended actions — Specific, practical steps to fix each gap: which form to file, which registration to obtain, which policy to draft, which register to maintain.
- Timeline for remediation — A realistic timeline for addressing each issue, accounting for the urgency of the gap and the time required to complete the necessary steps.
Turnaround for a standard compliance review is 5-7 working days. Businesses with more complex structures or multiple sectors may take 10-14 days. We confirm the timeline after the initial information-gathering call.
Who Should Get a Compliance Review
- Businesses older than 2 years that have never had a legal audit — If your business has been running for a few years without a structured compliance check, it is almost certain that some gaps exist. Finding and fixing them proactively is far less costly than dealing with a show-cause notice or inspection.
- Startups before their first fundraise — Investors and their legal teams will conduct due diligence. Unresolved compliance gaps — pending MCA filings, missing POSH committee, unregistered trademark — create delays and reduce investor confidence. A pre-fundraise compliance review lets you fix issues before they are flagged in due diligence.
- Businesses changing structure — Converting from a proprietorship to a private limited company, admitting new partners to an LLP, or restructuring shareholding. These events trigger fresh compliance obligations that are easily missed.
- Businesses before taking on a major contract or government tender — Large corporate clients and government departments often require compliance certificates or ask about regulatory status during vendor onboarding. A compliance review ensures you can respond with confidence.
- Businesses that have recently started collecting customer or employee data digitally — The DPDP Act 2023 creates new obligations. If you run a website, mobile app, or any platform that collects personal data, a compliance review will tell you what you need to do.
Frequently Asked Questions
After the initial information-gathering (usually a 20-30 minute call or a questionnaire), a standard compliance review for a single-sector SME takes 5-7 working days. More complex businesses — multiple business lines, multiple entities, sector-specific regulations like FSSAI or RBI — may take 10-14 days. We confirm the specific timeline when we understand your business structure.
The compliance gap report gives you a full picture of what needs to be done and in what order. Fixing the gaps is a separate engagement — and yes, we do assist with remediation. For most gaps, this involves drafting documents (policies, agreements, board resolutions), filing forms (MCA, labour department, FSSAI), or completing registrations. We quote separately for remediation work based on the specific gaps identified. Many clients find it more efficient to engage us to fix the gaps after the review is complete.
Yes. The compliance review is subject to attorney-client confidentiality. The information you share about your business — its structure, financial details, regulatory status — is not disclosed to any third party without your consent. This includes government authorities: we are advising you, not reporting to regulators. If we identify a gap that you are legally required to self-report (rare, but it occurs in some contexts), we will flag this clearly and advise you on how to handle it.
Getting a compliance review and promptly remedying identified gaps generally demonstrates good faith, which courts and regulators consider in penalty proceedings. More importantly, voluntary compliance — filing overdue returns, obtaining missing registrations, constituting required committees — is almost always treated more favourably than compliance forced by a show-cause notice or inspection. Fixing gaps proactively substantially reduces your legal risk. A compliance review is the starting point for that process.
Yes. Even a sole proprietorship operating a shop in Pondicherry has obligations: Shops and Establishments Act registration, GST registration (if turnover exceeds threshold), FSSAI registration (if food-related), Udyam registration (for MSME benefits), and potentially PF/ESI obligations if employees are engaged. The compliance landscape for a proprietorship is simpler than for a company, but gaps still exist and carry risk. A proprietorship-specific compliance review is scoped and priced accordingly — contact us for details.
Find Out Where Your Business Stands
A compliance review typically pays for itself in the first fine it helps you avoid. Call us for a brief discussion about your business, and we will scope the review for you.