India: Corporate/Commercial Law

The Income-tax Act, 2025 has introduced significant changes to the taxation framework for charitable entities, now classified as registered not-for-profit organisations (NPOs). This article examines how the Finance Act, 2026 has recalibrated provisions governing cancellation of registration for NPOs engaged in general public utility objects, comparing the new framework with the Income-tax Act, 1961 to reveal both intended alignments and unintended departures.

India's Ministry of Home Affairs has introduced sweeping amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act framework through the 2026 Amendment Rules, fundamentally transforming how NGOs and not-for-profits receive and utilize foreign funding. These changes establish purpose-specific and geography-specific registration requirements, enhanced disclosure obligations including ultimate donor identification, and objective benchmarks for organizational activity. Will these reforms strengthen accountability

India is perhaps one of the first countries in the world to make a robust and mandatory Corporate Social Responsibility (“CSR”) initiative which requires the corporations to contribute a portion of their earnings...

Private equity exits from India have reached record levels, but converting investment value into liquidity requires careful navigation of regulatory frameworks, tax structures, and strategic route selection. How can sponsors optimise exit readiness throughout the investment lifecycle to maximise deal certainty and preserve optionality across strategic sales, IPOs, secondary transactions, and public market sell-downs?

India's M&A market has reached unprecedented scale and complexity, with Q2 2026 recording USD 27.9 billion in transactions. As deal values surge and cross-border structures proliferate, the interplay between regulatory compliance, tax optimization, and transaction structuring has become critical to execution certainty and value preservation. How should deal teams navigate the expanded fast-track merger regime, tightened antitrust scrutiny, the new Income Tax Act 2025

On 13 July 2026, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) imposed penalties exceeding ₹142 crore on HP India and several reselers under Section 27 of the Competition Act, 2002 (Competition Act) for cartelisation and bid rigging in the sale and supply of HP personal system products, including laptops, desktops, workstations and accessories (Computers Case), and ink and toner cartridges (Cartridges Case). The orders arose from lesser penalty applications filed by HP India under Section 46 of the Competition Act read with the CCI (Lesser Penalty) Regulations, 2009.

For businesses operating in India, understanding the difference between personal data and sensitive personal data is important for building an effective privacy compliance framework. However, the legal position in India requires some care because the terminology used under the older Information Technology Rules, 2011 is different from the terminology used under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

This comprehensive newsletter examines recent regulatory developments across India's labour, corporate, environmental, and industry-specific legal frameworks. From new contribution rates for pension and provident funds to groundbreaking rules on electric vehicles and medical device software, the update covers critical compliance changes affecting businesses and employers. The newsletter also details state-level labour code implementations, amendments to e-commerce FDI policy, and environmental regulations t

The Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill 2026 has reignited debate over India's corporate compliance framework, particularly around proportionality in regulatory responses. While the Bill proposes decriminalizing certain offences and raising thresholds for small companies, the critical question remains: how can India simplify compliance burdens without compromising corporate governance standards?

Over the years, Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) has introduced a series of reforms to refine the winding-up framework governing Alternative Investment Funds (“AIFs”). Through these changes, SEBI has sought to make the winding-up process more practical and comprehensive, addressing the various issues that arise at the end of a fund’s tenure and improving the overall framework for closure of AIFs.

India's capital markets regulator has rolled out one of its most significant ease-of-doing-business reforms for foreign investors in recent years. The Single Window Automatic and Generalised Access for Trusted Foreign Investors framework, known as SWAGAT-FI, consolidates and simplifies registration for a defined category of low-risk foreign portfolio investors and foreign venture capital investors.

SEBI, through notification dated 03.07.2026, has notified the SEBI (Foreign Venture Capital Investors) (Amendment) Regulations, 2026 (“FVCI Amendment”) which amends the SEBI (Foreign Venture Capital Investors) Regulations, 2000 (“FVCI Regulations”).