In another Effort by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to facilitate ease of doing business the Registrar of Companies has introduced Simplified Proforma for Incorporating Company Electronically (SPICe). This effort is said to be implemented keeping in mind the problems and difficulties faced by applicants applying for any company registration.

Previously an effort had been made to simplify company registrations with the introduction of form INC 29 but that system did not gather much attraction due to the problem being faced by applicants with regards to rejections of name approvals and documentation required for Incorporation. In this new system of SPICe it anables the applicant to apply for incorporation with a name approval certificate taken prior or without a name approval certificate. SPICe system has also reduced the documents required for incorporation but has kept mandatory identity documents as a requirement to avoid malpractices.

SPICe has made filing of Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association electronically which were previously prepared manually and attached separately to incorporation forms. Subscriber sheets were and can be signed physically as per the conventional approach but with the introduction of SPICe now these subscriber sheets can now be signed using the digital signature certificates of the directors and subscribers and has improved the security of such vital documents involved in the incorporation of the company.

SPICe not only facilitates new incorporations electronically but also has been created keeping in mind conversions of companies. If any company is to be converted from limited by guarantees to limited by shares can now be done using SPICe. SPICe can be called as a true effort by the government in trying to implement ease of doing business and implementing electronic means of functioning at the ministry level.

SPICe has introduced three incorporation forms INC 32 for application of incorporation, INC 33 for Memorandum of Association and iNC 34 for Articles of Association. These forms can be downloaded from the MCA portal available here:

http://www.mca.gov.in/MinistryV2/companyformsdownload.html

More information about SPICe can be sought at the below article posted by the Ministry of Corporate affairs:

http://www.mca.gov.in/Ministry/pdf/CompaniesIncorporationFourthAmendmentRules_01102016.pdf

From the recent efforts of the government across many sectors the need for a Digital Signature Certificate is being prominent and any entrepreneur must possess one soon.