Aadhaar-like ID number for businesses in the works

NEW DELHI: The government mooted the idea of an ‘Aadhaar for business’ with an aim to further crackdown on shell companies and ensure easier traceability of public money.

“The government will evolve a scheme to assign every individual enterprise in India a unique ID,” finance minister Arun Jaitley said, as he outlined measures for increasing the ease of doing business in India.

A government official said the new scheme could be a buildup of the ministry’s existing Udyog Aadhaar project for micro, small and medium enterprises. The MSME ministry launched the Udyog Aadhaar scheme in September 2015 and, according to a report, more than 4.1 million enterprises across the country have obtained the Udyog Aadhaar number.


A unique ID for businesses “will provide increased traceability to ensure that no one can scam one company and move to another,” said Jaijit Bhattacharya, head, economic, regulatory and policy advisory, KPMG India.