Article · 18 min read

Legal Due Diligence Checklist for Indian Startups: What Investors Actually Check

Treelife Free Intermediate India

This is the India-specific piece the global guides cannot give you: it names the exact ROC and MCA filings investors reconcile your cap table against (PAS-3 for every allotment, MGT-7 annual returns, MGT-14 for ESOP schemes) and the FEMA FC-GPR filings that trip up foreign-funded companies. It maps the five deal-blocking red flags Indian investors hunt for, so you can clean the paperwork before it becomes a Condition Precedent that delays your closing.

  • Every share, CCPS, CCD, or SAFE allotment needs a PAS-3 filed with the MCA, investors reconcile your cap table against these filings and a mismatch is the most common deal-blocker
  • Core IP must be legally assigned from each founder to the company, IP sitting in a founder's name is a top red flag
  • An ESOP pool created by board resolution without the required special shareholder resolution is treated as unauthorized, document the scheme and grant letters cleanly before you raise
Open on treelife.in ↗

The question it answers

  1. What documents and diligence do investors ask for at seed, and how do I get ready?

Read with it

  1. This is the exact list a founder gets handed once a term sheet lands, written by YC Continuity's general counsel after hundreds... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · ~10 min read Series A Diligence Checklist Jason Kwon (Y Combinator)
  2. Written by a VC for early-stage founders, it explains what light-touch seed diligence actually is: at seed the room skews... Airtree Ventures (Open Source VC) Article · 12 min read What to include in your startup's data room Airtree Ventures
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →