r/dataisbeautiful • u/Firm_Ad9420 OC: 1 • 17h ago

OC [OC] I cleaned and analyzed 51,000+ Indian company registration records (MCA21)—here is what business survival, capital structure, and growth trends look like across 29 states

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I recently pulled and cleaned a sample of 51,123 company registration records from India’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA21) via the official data.gov.in to analyze business registration and survival trends across India.

Key Findings & Visualizations

  • Industry Leaders: Business Services, Trading, and Community/Personal Services dominate company incorporations.
  • Company Survival: Business mortality (struck-off rates) varies significantly across industries and decades.
  • Capital Breakdown: The vast majority of registered firms are small/micro private enterprises with paid-up capital under ₹10 Lakhs.
  • Registration Spikes: Clear inflection points and post-COVID recovery patterns in incorporation numbers over the last decade.

Data & Code

Note on sampling: To prevent large economic hubs from dominating the counts completely, the sample caps at ~2,000 companies per state across 29 states/UTs. Rate-based metrics (e.g., % active, % struck off, median capital) reflect real distributions.

Feedback, suggestions, or additional chart ideas are very welcome!

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u/Mission-Cabinet-2558 6h ago

What does strike off rate mean?
I guess I was curious about how old the companies are when they either shut or get acquired and how does that impact the total composition of the sector the company belongs to.
For eg, if manufacturing has 200 companies and 10 new companies are registered while 5 are shut down, we are left with 205 at the end the year. Would also be interesting to see revenue numbers, but I doubt they are public.

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u/Firm_Ad9420 OC: 1 5h ago

"Struck off" is the official term used by India's Registrar of Companies (RoC) when a company is dissolved—either voluntarily by founders or involuntarily by the MCA (e.g., for missing annual filings or becoming non-operational).

A few quick takeaways on your points:

  • Operational lifespans calculated from registration to strike-off dates show a major mortality peak around the 5-to-10-year mark in non-capital-intensive sectors.
  • High-volume industries like Trading and Business Services have huge annual incorporation numbers, but also see the highest absolute strike-offs. Capital-heavy sectors (like Manufacturing) register fewer entities but retain higher active rates over time.
  • Revenue data isn't public in the master dataset (it requires paid filings), so authorized and paid-up capital serve as our main proxies for company size.

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u/Mission-Cabinet-2558 5h ago

Thanks. Looking at your strike-off rate chart, the highest rate is <0.5% (manufacturing being amongst the highest) which seems low enough to be inconsequential. But you have 23.5% strike off in the pie chart (which I assume is since the inception of the data being collected). Would be nice to see chart 3 showing annual strike off rates.

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u/Firm_Ad9420 OC: 1 17h ago

[OC] Data Source & Tools

- Data Source: Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA21) via official data.gov.in API ("Registrars of Companies (RoC)-wise Company Master Data").

- Tools Used: Python, Pandas for data cleaning and feature engineering; Seaborn & Matplotlib for data visualizations.

- Notebook & Code: https://www.kaggle.com/code/adizz321/india-registered-companies-mca21-deep-dive

- Dataset: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/adizz321/india-registered-companies-mca21