Onesto Legal · New Delhi
Incorporation makes the company exist. It does not make the product sellable.
We map every certification, permit and registration your product and premises need before you can legally trade, put dates and owners against each, and then obtain them.
Licensing is the item most often left off the entry plan and the one most likely to add six months to it, because several approvals require product testing, factory inspection or a physical premises that does not exist yet.
The order in which you apply matters more than the applications themselves.
The problem
A company that has budgeted eight weeks to enter India and discovers a product certification takes four months has not lost paperwork time. It has lost a season.
Some approvals depend on others. A pollution control consent to establish generally precedes the consent to operate. A factory licence assumes a building. Product certification frequently requires samples tested at a recognised laboratory, and the laboratory queue is not something anyone can accelerate.
Others are triggered by facts most European teams do not think to mention: importing rather than manufacturing, packaging in retail units, making a claim on the label, or employing above a headcount threshold.
The consequence of getting it wrong is rarely a fine. It is a container held at port, a product withdrawn from shelves, or a customer who cancels because you cannot supply a certificate they are required to hold.
We work this out at the feasibility stage, alongside the entry plan, so that licensing runs in parallel with incorporation rather than being discovered at the end of it.
The usual suspects
Which of these apply depends entirely on your product, your premises and whether you are importing, manufacturing or only distributing. This is the shortlist we work through on a first call.
| Approval | Applies when | Granted by | Practical note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Importer exporter codeIEC | You import goods into or export goods from India. | Directorate General of Foreign Trade | Quick to obtain and absolutely blocking. Nothing crosses the border without it. |
| BIS certificationBureau of Indian Standards | Your product falls in a category under mandatory certification. | Bureau of Indian Standards | Involves factory inspection and product testing. This is usually the longest item on the list. |
| FSSAI registration or licence | You make, import, pack, store or sell food or beverages. | Food Safety and Standards Authority of India | Label compliance is assessed as part of it, so artwork should be reviewed before it is printed. |
| Legal metrologyPackaged commodities | You sell in pre packed retail units. | State legal metrology department | Declarations on the pack are prescribed. Getting this wrong means reprinting, not a warning. |
| Pollution control consentsConsent to establish and to operate | You manufacture or process. | State pollution control board | Consent to establish comes before construction. Sequencing errors here are expensive. |
| Factory licence | You operate a factory above the prescribed thresholds. | State factories inspectorate | Assumes an approved building plan and safety provisions in place. |
| Trade licence and fire clearance | You occupy commercial premises. | Municipal authority and fire service | Straightforward, and frequently forgotten until a landlord or an inspector asks. |
| Shops and establishments registration | You employ people in commercial premises. | State labour department | Also the trigger for several employment obligations. |
| Drug, cosmetic and device approvals | Your product is regulated as a drug, cosmetic or medical device. | CDSCO and state drug authorities | A specialist track with its own timelines. Start early and assume iteration. |
| Wireless and telecom equipment approvalWPC and ETA | Your product transmits on a radio frequency. | Wireless Planning and Coordination wing | Catches a lot of otherwise ordinary industrial and consumer equipment. |
| Extended producer responsibilityEPR | You place plastic, packaging, electronics or batteries on the market. | Central Pollution Control Board | Registration plus ongoing targets and reporting rather than a one off approval. |
Categories under mandatory certification, thresholds and the responsible authority change by notification and by state. We confirm the current position for your specific product rather than relying on a general list.
What we do
Handled as a project with a critical path rather than as a series of individual applications.
A written schedule of every approval your product, premises and activity require, with the authority, the realistic timeline, the dependency on other approvals and an owner against each.
Preparation and filing of the applications themselves, with the technical documentation, drawings, specifications and undertakings each authority expects in the form it expects them.
Arranging product testing at recognised laboratories, preparing for factory and premises inspections, and attending them so questions are answered on the day.
Checking artwork against declaration requirements before it goes to print, which is materially cheaper than after.
Following the file, responding to queries and deficiency memos, and escalating properly when an application stops moving.
Tracking expiry dates, filing renewals ahead of time, and meeting the reporting and record keeping conditions that most licences carry.
How it runs
Timelines are driven by testing queues and inspection scheduling, neither of which anyone can compress. What we can do is run them in parallel.
What it is, what it is made of, how it is packed, whether it is imported or made locally, and what claims the label carries.
The written map: every approval needed, the dependencies between them, and the realistic date each can be obtained by.
Technical files, drawings, test reports, parent company documents and undertakings assembled to each authority’s format.
Applications submitted in the right order, queries answered, inspections attended, and the file pushed rather than left in a queue.
Certificates delivered with their conditions summarised, and the renewal dates added to your compliance calendar.
Common questions
General guidance rather than advice on a particular matter. Requirements and timelines change, and sector rules vary.
Mandatory certification applies to notified product categories, and the list is extended by notification from time to time. The starting point is the product’s classification rather than what it is called commercially.
Send us the technical specification and the customs tariff heading you expect to import under, and we will confirm the position before you commit to a timeline.
Generally no, where the approval is a precondition to import or sale, and attempting it is how consignments end up held at port with demurrage running.
There are limited routes for samples and for testing quantities, which is often the sensible way to keep the certification process moving while commercial supply waits.
For a straightforward product with no mandatory certification, days. For a product requiring BIS certification with factory inspection, several months, and that is the item to plan the launch around.
This is precisely why we do the applicability mapping at feasibility stage, so licensing runs alongside incorporation instead of starting after it.
It depends on the approval. Some sit with the foreign manufacturer, some with the Indian importer or brand owner, and some with the occupier of the premises.
This is worth deciding deliberately, because whoever holds the licence holds a degree of control over your access to the market, and that is not something to hand to a distributor by default.
Consequences range from seizure of goods and a direction to withdraw the product, through financial penalties, to prosecution in the more heavily regulated categories such as food and drugs.
The commercial damage usually exceeds the legal one, because your customers are the ones left holding non compliant stock.
Most do, on cycles that vary by approval, and many carry ongoing conditions such as record keeping, periodic testing or reporting. A licence obtained and then forgotten is a compliance problem waiting for an inspection.
We put renewal dates into the same calendar as your corporate filings, so the whole position sits in one place.
Onesto Legal
Onesto Legal is the in-house legal practice of Onesto Management Consultancy, operating from our New Delhi office. The people who advise are the people who act.
Legal Head
Heads the practice from New Delhi, with day to day conduct of corporate, regulatory and contentious matters.
Advocate
Advocate and founder of Onesto Management Consultancy. Doctoral candidate in International Law at the University of Deusto, Bilbao.
Advocate
Advocate, co-founder and director. Doctoral candidate in International Law at the University of Deusto, Bilbao.
Related
The entity that will hold the licences, structured properly.
Read more →The ongoing filing calendar once the approvals are in place.
Read more →Licensing mapped alongside feasibility rather than after it.
Read more →Plant setup, where consents and factory approvals sit on the critical path.
Read more →Write to us
The technical specification, how it is packaged, and whether you intend to import it or make it in India. That is enough for us to tell you which approvals apply and how long they will realistically take.
We answer from New Delhi and from Bilbao, so European clients are not waiting a day for a reply.
Onesto Legal, Onesto Management Consultancy
New Delhi, India and Bilbao, Spain