One of my clients recently had a case which I am explaining below and if you are stuck in such similar situation, here is what to do.
Note: Due to attorney-client privilege, I cannot disclose complete case details or identify the actual parties involved. However, I am sharing the essential facts and legal approach so that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you can understand the available solutions and legal remedies.
TL;DR: There's no published market rate for a due diligence process in India, and no fixed number of days it takes. Both depend entirely on scope, and checking eight companies is a different job from checking one. And no, there is no public tool that will tell you whether a person carries a criminal record. That answer has to be built from police verification, district court record searches and written declarations, all with the person's consent.
Rohan Gupta runs a small legal services company out of Pune. In February 2025 an incubator in Jaipur asked him to run a diligence round on nine startups in its cohort before a follow-on funding call. He quoted on a document review basis and got the work.
Three weeks in, one portfolio company's records showed a software licence that had been assigned to a former contractor in Kochi. Nobody had asked for the assignment deed. The incubator paused the round, and Rohan spent a fortnight defending work he had scoped too narrowly in the first place. He approached the Chamber of Advocate Sudhir Rao after that.
The fix wasn't dramatic. The engagement was rebuilt around a written scope note, layered verification, and a report designed to flag risk rather than summarise whatever documents happened to arrive. Advocate Sudhir Rao and his office worked backwards from a simple question: if this diligence were ever challenged, who verified what, on what date, and from which record? The incubator restarted the round in April 2025. The deal closed with a warranty and a holdback attached.
Rohan's gap was commercial, not legal. He knew the law. He didn't know how to package verification so that somebody else could rely on it. Advocate Sudhir Rao's experience in this specific area helped the client secure the outcome he needed, on terms he could actually defend six months later.
Key Facts of the Case
- The client ran a legal services company and took on cohort-level diligence for an incubator, priced on a documents-only basis.
- Nine startups were in scope, but no written scope note defined what would and would not be verified.
- A key software licence had been assigned to a former contractor, and no assignment deed was ever requested.
- The incubator paused funding and questioned the quality of the work, not the legal advice.
- The Chamber rebuilt the engagement around a defined scope, layered verification and a risk-flag report format.
- Verification covered ownership records, registry searches, financials and consent-based background checks.
- The round resumed and closed with a warranty and holdback, shifting the residual risk contractually.
The Direct Legal Answer
What does a diligence process in India actually cover?
Corporate records, capital structure, contracts, intellectual property ownership, litigation history, financial statements, regulatory licences and key-person background. Criminal record analysis and education history are the two items that most buyers assume are covered and most providers quietly skip, because both need consent and manual legwork.
What is the current market price for doing this?
There is no rate card. Diligence is priced per engagement, and the quote swings with the number of entities, the jurisdictions, and how deep the verification goes. Anyone quoting a flat per-startup figure before a scope note exists is pricing a document review, not verification. Those are very different products, and the difference only shows up when something is missed.
How long does a diligence process take?
For a small private company with clean records, two to four weeks is realistic. Add companies, add jurisdictions, add a missing assignment deed, and it stretches. Registry searches and court record searches run at their own pace, and no advocate can compress them.
Is there a tool to check whether someone has a criminal record?
No. India has no public, searchable criminal record database. The National Crime Records Bureau and the police-facing CCTNS network are not open to private parties. What you can do is apply for a police verification certificate, search district court records where the person has lived or worked, and take a signed declaration with an indemnity. That combination is what a defensible background file looks like.
Advice in Such Cases
Consult with Lawyer: The very basic and important step to start is talk to Lawyer / advocate. You should not hesitate in paying his consultation fee i.e. might be in range of Rs. 10,000 to 50,000 depends case to case. He is helping you in this situation to come out. He is expert in the domain and can help you explain the procedure which you might have never explored. A good lawyer can get the issues resolved much faster than you think.
Put the scope in writing before you quote. If a client won't sign a scope note, that's your answer about how the engagement will end.
Build consent into the process from day one. Personal data can't be pulled and processed without a lawful ground, ordinarily the person's consent, so the consent form isn't paperwork, it's the thing that makes the file usable.
Keep a verification log. Date, source, document, who pulled it, and where the original sits. Six months later, that log is the difference between a file somebody can rely on and a shrug.
Say out loud in the report what you did not verify. A limitation paragraph is not an admission of weakness, it is the reason the rest of the report holds up.
Price the verification, not the reading. Reading is the cheap half. Searching a district court registry, chasing an assignment deed, running a consent-based police verification — that is where the hours actually go, and that is what a quote should reflect.
What Happens If You Approach the Chamber
The first conversation is not a strategy session. It is a scoping conversation, and it usually takes twenty minutes. Bring the question you are actually being asked to answer, not the documents. If an incubator or investor wants diligence on a cohort, the Chamber needs to know how many entities, in which states, and what decision the report is meant to support.
From there, expect a written scope note before any fee is discussed. It sets out what will be verified, what will be flagged as unverified, and the format of the report. That document matters more than the price, because it is the only thing that protects both sides if the round is paused later.
- Step one: a short note on the transaction — who is buying, who is selling, what decision is pending.
- Step two: a scope note and a fee estimate based on entity count and jurisdictions.
- Step three: consent forms for any individual whose records need checking.
- Step four: verification, with a running log of source and date.
- Step five: a report that separates verified facts, unverified items and risk flags.
Turnaround on a single private company with clean records typically runs two to four weeks from the date consent forms come back. Registry and court searches move at their own speed; nobody can promise a date for a search that depends on a court registry's backlog.
On these facts there may be nothing to argue. If the transaction has already closed and the warranty period has lapsed, the honest answer is that the remedy is contractual, not adversarial, and a consultation will tell you whether there is anything left to pursue. That is worth knowing before you spend money on it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I check whether a person has a criminal record without their consent?
Not through any lawful route that produces a usable record. Court judgments and orders in many district courts are publicly accessible, so a search of a named person's litigation history is possible in some places. But a clean or dirty police record — FIRs, charge sheets, pending investigations — is not open to private parties. Consent is what unlocks the verification route.
Does a police verification certificate prove a person has no criminal record?
No. It proves what the issuing police station's records showed on the date of issue, for the purpose it was issued for. A person who lived in three states can produce a clean certificate from one district and still be untraceable in the other two. Treat it as one data point, not a clearance.
How much will a diligence process cost me?
There is no fixed figure, and anybody who gives you one over the phone before knowing the scope is guessing. Cost tracks entity count, number of states, whether physical registry searches are needed, and whether background verification of individuals is in scope. Ask for a scope note first, then a number.
What documents should I keep ready?
Incorporation documents and the latest shareholding pattern, the financial statements for the last three years, a list of material contracts, IP assignments and registrations, any litigation notices received, and the licences the business operates under. If you already have a term sheet or a draft share purchase agreement, send that too — the diligence has to answer the questions that document raises.
Can this be done remotely?
Partly. Document review and consent-based verification can run remotely. Physical searches at a district court or a sub-registrar office in another state generally cannot, and that is where timelines slip.
What to Send Before You Write In
Keep it short. Send a two-line note describing the transaction and what decision is pending, the date of any term sheet or agreement already signed, and a list of the entities in scope with their states of incorporation. If you have already commissioned a diligence exercise that missed something, send the original scope note and the report — the gaps are usually visible in those two documents alone.
You can reach the chamber through the contact page or fix a slot at /book. The chamber sits at Lawyers' Chamber, Chamber No. 86, Supreme Court of India, New Delhi – 110001, and can be reached at +91 97295 06771 or me@sudhirrao.com.
Family and matrimonial queries are handled by Adv. Jyoti Rao, Bar Council of Delhi D/891/2023. Criminal defence, cyber crime and economic offences come to Advocate Sudhir Rao directly.
This article is general information about how diligence is scoped and verified in India. It is not legal advice on your own situation, and reading it does not create an advocate–client relationship.
Advocate Sudhir Rao, Supreme Court of India