Licenses & Certifications
Which Licenses Does Your Business Actually Need?
Last Reviewed: 28 July 2026
Reviewed by: IndiaBusiness.ai Editorial
Quick Answer
It depends entirely on what your business does, not how it's structured. A food business needs FSSAI, a physical shop needs Shop & Establishment Act registration, pre-packaged goods need Legal Metrology compliance — most businesses need two or three of these together, not just one.
Registration (Pvt Ltd, LLP, Proprietorship) tells the government your business exists. Licenses tell the government you're allowed to do the specific thing you're doing — sell food, run a shop, sell packaged goods with a printed MRP, employ staff in certain states. They're a separate layer, and most businesses need more than one.
The mistake we see most often isn't skipping licenses entirely — it's assuming registration alone covers you, then discovering a gap when a marketplace rejects a listing, a municipal inspector visits, or a customer complaint triggers a compliance check.
The practical approach: map what your business actually does — do you have a physical premises, do you sell food, do you sell pre-packaged goods, do you employ staff — and each of those maps to a specific license. The Decision Guide below does exactly that mapping.