Registering a Proprietorship Firm Name in India

If you are worried about the legal requirements of establishing a company, you can always choose a Sole Proprietorship as your business entity. It’s not a legal entity and therefore, sole proprietorship registration is often considered easy.

At a glance, to register a sole proprietorship you need only two things: a bank account and the GST registration. Through this article, we are going to tell you how to implement these things properly to register your sole proprietorship firm in India.

Let’s start with the definition of Sole Proprietorship

Before we begin discussing the process to proprietorship firm name registration, it will suit for you to know the definition of a sole proprietorship. It is:

1. The most basic form of business entity in India.
2. Not a legal entity and hence, no compliance other than income tax returns.
3. Easy to form, with no substantial legal paperwork required.
4. Not necessary to have any money when you are establishing it.
5. Not slave of separate income tax returns other than GST registration.

Sole Proprietorship Firm name registration process

To register the name of Sole Proprietorship, you need to follow the steps below:

1. Decide the name of your sole proprietorship firm: The name of any business holds a tremendous amount of weight. Therefore, you should think long and hard while naming your sole proprietorship. It should be unique, memorable and should not offend anybody. That being said, it’s not difficult for a sole proprietorship to decide upon a name. You can name your Sole Proprietorship with your own name if you want.
2. Set the location from where you are going to conduct your business: Before the proprietorship firm goes through name registration, it should decide its place of business. Depending upon your trade, you can set your business anywhere. However, for nuanced businesses like eateries, legal firms, shops.
3.  Collect the documents required for sole proprietorship registration: Following are the documents required for the GST registration of your Sole Proprietorship firm.
   1. ID proof of the proprietor
   2. Address proof of the place of business
   3. Government registrations
   4. A certificate from the Chartered accountant.

Once collected, file the application for GST registration in India. Once you acquire the GST registration number, you can apply for a bank account in the name of your firm.

4. Register the proprietorship firm name under trademark: Even when you have registered your proprietorship firm, you aren’t secure. In order to prevent your competitors from using the same name, you need to register it as a trademark. The process of trademark registration for a sole proprietorship business name is as follows:
   1. Conduct a trademark search.
   2. File the application for trademark registration.
   3. Monitor the application for trademark registration.
   4. File the trademark reply if the trademark application is rejected.
   5. Wait for 4 months till the trademark is published in the journal.
   6. If there are no objections, the trademark/name of your sole proprietorship will be transferred to trademark registry.

With this step, the process of your sole proprietorship business name registration is complete.

Conclusion

To register your sole proprietorship business name, you need to move one step further from just registering your sole proprietorship. You should also register it as a trademark. With trademark registration for your proprietorship firm’s name, you can protect its identity for a long time.

Author: Dushyant Sharma

Hey there, I'm Dushyant Sharma. With the extensive knowledge I've gained in past 8 years, I have been creating content on various subjects such as banking, insurance, telecom, and all the important registration and licensing processes for various companies. I'm here to help everyone with my expertise in these areas through my articles.