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Between 2014 and 2020, India climbed 79 places on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings. It moved from 142nd to 63rd out of 190 countries. When the World Bank retired the index in 2021 over data-integrity concerns, the reform effort behind that climb did not stop. It simply stopped being measured by a single global number for a while. The Bank’s replacement framework, B-READY, is set to include India in its third report later in 2026.
The administrative work behind that assessment has continued throughout this period. India’s incorporation data for online company registration through 2026 offers some of the clearest evidence of what these reforms have delivered.
The Machinery Behind the Numbers
Two changes did most of the heavy lifting, and neither made for a flashy headline at the time. The Central Registration Centre, operational since January 2016, centralised incorporation processing. It reduced dependence on individual state Registrars of Companies and made processing more consistent across states. Then came SPICe+, the integrated MCA filing form. It combined five steps into one online submission, including name reservation, DIN allotment, PAN, TAN, and the Certificate of Incorporation.
The result shows up directly in the processing time. Incorporation that used to take the better part of a month for a straightforward application now typically clears in under two weeks when documentation is in order. That’s not a marketing claim. It is a measurable administrative outcome that once directly contributed to India’s Ease of Doing Business score before the index was retired.
What the 2026 Registration Data Shows
India added 1.31 lakh new business registrations between January and April 2026 alone. These included Private Limited Companies, LLPs, One Person Companies, Public Limited Companies, and Foreign Companies. Monthly registration volumes have consistently run above 20,000 through early 2026, more than double the long-term monthly average of 10,699 since 2013.
Online company registration through the SPICe+ system has become routine for many founders. That may be the strongest sign that the reform has worked.
LLP Registration Reflects the Same Administrative Shift
LLP registration numbers tell a sharper version of the same story. LLP filings rose 40% year-on-year to 86,476 in FY 2025-26. This was up from 61,769 the previous year, while April 2026 alone recorded 10,424 new LLPs, the highest single-month figure on record. LLPs now account for close to 30% of all new business registrations, a share that would have been unthinkable when incorporation still meant physical paperwork routed through separate state offices.
That growth traces back to the same administrative machinery as company registration broadly. The LLP’s FiLLiP filing form runs on the same MCA digital infrastructure. It gets tracked through the same centralised database. It also benefits from the same processing-time improvements that reshaped incorporation across the board.
What Replaced the World Bank Ranking
With no global index to point to anymore, India has shifted toward its own measurement tools. The Business Reform Action Plan (BRAP) now ranks states on their own implementation of ease-of-doing-business reforms. This creates a form of internal competition between state governments that the old single national score never captured. FDI inflows, which touched $80.6 billion in FY 2024-25, serve as one real-world proxy for investor confidence. The National Single Window System, launched in 2021, extends the same centralisation logic that worked for company registration to a much wider range of business approvals and clearances.
Outlook
Rankings make for better headlines, but the incorporation data tells a more durable story. Reforms built around centralisation and digital-first filing kept compounding well after the scorecard that once tracked them disappeared. Whether or not a global ranking returns, India’s registration numbers through 2026 suggest the underlying administrative machinery is still working as designed. Civil servants and MCA officials spent years building this system.
(Disclaimer: This is a partnered content article. The information, data and views presented here were provided by the partner for informational purposes. Publication of the article does not constitute an endorsement or confirmation of the information’s accuracy or completeness.)
