How to Complete the ESI Registration Process in 8 Steps

The ESI (Employees’ State Insurance) registration process runs entirely online, and for most employers it finishes on the day they start it.

You sign up on the employer portal run by ESIC (Employees’ State Insurance Corporation). You fill in the registration form, and a 17-digit employer code is issued the moment you submit it (explained in detail below).

The form is not the hard part of the ESI registration process. The deadline is 15 days from the date the Act first applies to your unit.

The Act reaches any factory at 10 people. For a shop or another kind of establishment the number is 10 or 20, depending on the state.

This page walks the eight steps in order, and says what to have ready before you log in. It also sets out what registering late costs, now that the one-time amnesty has gone.

What Is the ESI Registration Process?

This section covers what the law asks of you: registration inside 15 days, on a form called Form 01.

ESI registration is the step that puts your business on ESIC’s books. Until a code number exists there is nothing to pay contributions against, and no insurance numbers for the staff who should be covered.

It is a duty written into the Act rather than a formality. Section 2A of the ESI Act, 1948 says every factory or establishment to which the Act applies shall be registered, in the manner the regulations set out.

Regulation 10-B is specific about both the deadline and the paperwork. It gives you 15 days from the date the Act becomes applicable, and asks for a declaration in Form 01.

The duty runs the other way too. Once ESIC’s regional office for your area is satisfied the Act applies, it has to allot your code number and tell you what it is.

On the portal that step is automated, which is why the number appears while you are still on screen. The regulation sets the duty, not a waiting time.

The ESI Registration Process in 8 Steps

This section walks the whole sequence, from the sign-up screen to the C-11 letter. Each step is one screen or one decision, and ESIC sets the procedure out in its own published answers.

Step 1. Confirm the Act Applies to You

Check your headcount against the number your state uses, and check who earns under the wage limit. Both are set out below. Get this wrong and everything after it is wrong too.

Step 2. Put the Particulars in Front of You

A garment unit taking on its eleventh machinist wants the PAN, the bank account and the principal employer’s name to hand before it logs in, not halfway through a form. The full list of seven is further down this page.

Step 3. Sign Up on the Employer Portal

You give the unit name, the principal employer, your state and region, and an email address. A user ID and a password come back by email.

Step 4. Log Back In and Open Form 01

This is the Employer’s Registration Form the regulations name. On screen it is broken across several tabs rather than presented as one long page.

Step 5. Fill In the Unit Details

Type of employer, type of licence, nature of business and category, PAN, and the designations you employ. Mandatory fields carry an asterisk.

Step 6. Choose a Branch Office and an Inspection Division

The branch office you pick becomes the one your staff deal with, and is where a first benefit payment is made from. ESIC lets you pick any branch office and any inspection division, so the nearest of each is a sensible default rather than a requirement.

Step 7. Pay the Advance Contribution, If It Applies

This screen is only for manpower suppliers, security agencies and contractors, who put down six months in advance. Every other employer goes straight past it.

Step 8. Collect the Code and the C-11 Letter

The 17-digit code is generated on submission. The C-11 registration letter reaches your email, carries no signature because it does not need one, and stands as valid proof of registration on its own. Where an advance contribution was payable, it follows once the bank confirms the payment.

Registering the business is only the first part. Each worker is registered separately and online, before their first day, which produces a Temporary Identification Certificate valid for 30 days.

Link the worker’s Aadhaar number to that certificate and it becomes the e-Pehchan, the permanent version. The insurance number issued at that point stays with the employee for life.

Your own extra sites do not start again from scratch either. A sub-unit, a branch of the business or a sales office is registered from the same login, against your primary code number. It can sit in your state or another one, and gets a sub-code of its own.

Which Employers Must Register, and When

This section covers who is caught by the rule: every factory at 10 staff, and shops at whatever number their own state sets.

The Headcount That Brings You In

Factories are the simple case. Ten or more people brings the Act in, and that number does not change from state to state.

Establishments are not simple. Shops, hotels, cinemas, road transport, newspapers, private medical institutions and educational institutions were brought in by state notifications, and the states did not settle on one number.

Where the unit is	Employees at which it must register
Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tripura, Uttarakhand, West Bengal	10
Andaman and Nicobar, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh	20
Any factory, in any state	10

ESIC publishes that table inside its employer registration help file, so the number for your state is checkable rather than a matter of opinion.

ESIC’s list covers the 35 states and union territories reproduced above, plus one further line for units outside India, which is not shown here.

It has one gap worth knowing about. It was drawn up before Telangana and Ladakh existed as they do now, so if you are in either, confirm the figure with your regional office first.

The wage side is settled and has not moved for years. ESIC puts the coverage limit at ₹21,000 a month, and ₹25,000 a month for a person with disability, effective from 1 January 2017.

The 15-Day Clock

The clock starts on the date the Act applies, not the date somebody notices it has. A shop in Gujarat that took on its tenth worker in March is already late by April, whether or not anyone was counting.

The date itself is the part almost nobody writes down at the time. A business that crossed the threshold eighteen months ago has to work it back out of joining dates and attendance records, which is a harder job than the registration it is meant to trigger.

Registration does not always start with the employer, and the other route runs the opposite way round. Sometimes ESIC finds a unit through its own survey and issues the code number first. The employer still files the Form 01 declaration, within 15 days of being told the number.

What Employers Need for ESI Registration

Step 2 said to have the particulars in front of you. This is that list: seven details to sign up, and the few the registration form adds once you are inside.

The list is shorter than most people expect, because there is no document upload. ESIC states that registration is fully online, with no physical application papers required before it or after it, and it names seven things the sign-up screen asks for:

1. The factory or establishment name, and its address
2. The principal employer’s name
3. The bank account of the business
4. The PAN (Permanent Account Number) of the business
5. Whether power is used, if you are registering a factory
6. Your state and region
7. An email address the business will still hold in three years

That last one matters more than it looks, because your user ID, password and registration letter all land in that inbox and nowhere else.

The registration form asks for a little more once you are inside. It wants the type of employer, the type of licence you hold, the nature of the business, and the designations you employ.

The licence question is the one worth preparing for. Having your Shops and Establishments registration in place first makes it easy to answer.

What the ESI Registration Process Costs

This section covers the money: nothing to register, for most employers, and 4% of covered wages remitted every month afterwards, of which 3.25% is the employer’s own.

The Registration Itself

For most employers, nothing. ESIC charges no registration fee, and because the whole thing is done on screen, there is nothing to print, courier or have attested either.

The six-month advance contribution at step seven is not a general rule. ESIC’s help file applies it to manpower suppliers, security agencies and contractors. A hospital, a school or a factory registering on its own account never sees that screen.

The Monthly Contribution

Once you are registered, both sides pay. ESIC’s contribution rates put the employee’s share at 0.75% of wages and the employer’s at 3.25%, in force since 1 July 2019.

So 4% of covered wages leaves the business each month, though only the 3.25% is its own money. That, rather than the registration, is the number worth putting in a budget.

ESI Penalties for Registering Late

This section covers what a delay costs: 12% interest a year, damages of up to 25% on top, and no amnesty left to fall back on.

Interest and Damages

Interest comes first. The ESI (General) Regulations, 1950 set it at a simple 12% a year for each day of delay, under regulation 31-A.

Damages are charged separately, under regulation 31-C, and step up with the length of the delay. The most ESIC may charge is 5% a year on a delay under two months, 10% from two, 15% from four, and 25% once it reaches six.

Neither charge replaces the contribution itself. You still owe every rupee that should have been paid from the date the Act applied to you.

The Amnesty Window Has Closed

ESIC ran a one-time drive called SPREE, the Scheme to Promote Registration of Employers and Employees, which let unregistered employers come in without being asked for past contributions. It ran from July 2025, and was extended once, to 31 January 2026.

That window has closed, so anyone registering now does so under the ordinary rules. It is worth checking the date on any guide that still recommends waiting for an amnesty.

Common ESI Registration Mistakes

The faults repeat, and none of them are form-filling errors. They are mistakes about who counts, or about which units are in.

Type of business	Where it goes wrong
Manufacturing unit	Counting only permanent staff, when contract workers on site take the unit past the threshold
Retail chain across states	Applying one state’s headcount to every branch, when the numbers differ
Private hospital or diagnostic lab	Assuming a clinic is outside the Act, when a state notification brought it in
School or coaching institute	Treating visiting and part-time teaching staff as outside the count
Hotel or restaurant group	Registering the head office and leaving the outlets to be picked up later

Most of those start before anybody opens the portal, in working out who is on the roll and where they work. The last one starts at the portal and is never finished.

That is why the portal is no safety net. It has only the figure you type into it to go on.

One pattern is worth naming. The people who take a business past the threshold are rarely the ones on the permanent roll. They are the contract cleaner, the part-time teacher and the two staff at the second outlet, and nobody counts them until a headcount asks.

Which makes the threshold a records problem before it is a portal problem. If the roll is right, the figure you type is right.

Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll) is a complete workforce management system for every kind of business, running attendance, shifts, leaves, approvals, payroll and statutory compliance in one place.

The headcount and the wage figure both come off the attendance record that already drives the salary. So the number you register on and the number you later pay on are the same one. Our guide to the attendance to salary workflow shows where that record starts.

Your ESI Registration Process Checklist

Run your own position past six questions before you open the portal.

1. Does the Act apply to you at all, by the headcount your state uses for your type of unit?
2. What date did it first apply, and how many of your 15 days are left?
3. Are the particulars ready, down to the bank account and the PAN?
4. Is the email address one the business controls, rather than a personal or a former employee’s account?
5. Do you fall in the contractor group that pays six months in advance?
6. Is there a plan for registering each employee, so the insurance numbers follow the code number?

Keep the C-11 letter where your accounts team can find it. It is your proof of registration, and it belongs with your statutory registers rather than in one person’s inbox.

Getting Your ESI Registration Right

The registration itself is the easy part. It is online, and for most employers it is free and done within the same day.

What costs money is the date. Fifteen days is a short window, the clock starts without telling you, and the amnesty that used to forgive a late start closed in January 2026.

So work out the date the Act applied to you, count forward 15 days, and put the sitting in the diary before that date.

One thing to rule out first. If a code number was issued to your unit years ago and nobody can find it, trace that number rather than starting again, because further sites belong under it as sub-codes.

Frequently Asked Questions