E6 · Sourcing, supply and the buying decision

Areca Leaf Plate Exporters in India: How to Verify One Before You Send Money

By Ramu Devunuri, Founder, Foliware India LLP · Updated 26 October 2026

12 min readFoliware India LLPReviewed 14 September 2026

The four records, and what each one is for

Run these in order. They are free, none of them requires you to tell the supplier you are looking, and the first two take minutes.

What the DGFT IEC lookup actually proves

The Importer Exporter Code, usually shortened to IEC, is the registration an Indian firm must hold to import or export. Paragraph 2.07(a) of the Handbook of Procedures under the Foreign Trade Policy 2023 puts it in four words: “IEC is compulsory for import and /or exports.” A supplier without one cannot file a shipping bill, which means they cannot export in their own name.

Two features of the IEC make it more useful than it looks.

One IEC per PAN. The DGFT IEC module refuses an application where the firm’s Permanent Account Number has already been used for an IEC. That gives you a one to one link between the export registration and the tax identity of the legal entity. It also means that a supplier presenting two different IECs for what they describe as one business is presenting two legal entities, and you should ask which one will invoice you.

An IEC has to be refreshed every year or it dies. Paragraph 2.15(a) of the Handbook requires the holder to update the IEC “as and when a change takes place immediately or in any case at least once in a year”, and paragraph 2.10(b) allows de-activation under paragraph 2.05(e) of the Foreign Trade Policy where that does not happen. DGFT has actually used it: Trade Notice 25/2021-22 of 19 November 2021 de-activated IECs that had not been updated since 2014. A live IEC therefore evidences a firm that is still doing the annual housekeeping, which is a weak but real signal of an operating business.

What the lookup does not tell you is whether the firm has ever shipped. An IEC is a registration, not a trading history. If export experience matters to you, ask for the last three bills of lading with the consignee redacted, which is the evidence a registration cannot substitute for.

What a GST registration proves, and where buyers misread it

The Goods and Services Tax portal lets anyone search a taxpayer by GSTIN without logging in. Pre-login it returns the legal name of the business, the trade name, the effective date of registration, the constitution of business, the principal place of business, the date of cancellation where the registration has been cancelled, and a return filing table.

Four things to do with that screen.

Compare the legal name against every other document. The legal name on the GST record is the entity that exists in law. If the proforma invoice, the ISO certificate and the bank details do not all carry that name, you have more than one entity in the picture and you need to know why before you pay anyone.

Read the constitution of business. Private limited company, limited liability partnership, partnership firm and proprietorship are different legal forms with different levels of public disclosure and different recourse. None is disqualifying. They change what the rest of your checks can find.

Check the effective date of registration against the experience claimed. A firm describing fifteen years of exporting on a registration dated last year may simply have restructured, but it is a question to ask rather than an inconsistency to ignore.

Look for a cancellation date. A cancelled or suspended GSTIN on the entity that is about to invoice you is the clearest stop signal any of these searches produces.

The thing a GST record cannot do is tell you what happens at the address. The principal place of business may be a manufacturing unit, an office above a shop, or an accountant’s address. That distinction is the whole subject of telling a manufacturer from a trader on a directory listing, and no tax register will settle it for you.

What the MCA registry shows, and who is not on it

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs maintains master data for companies and limited liability partnerships. It gives you the corporate identity number or LLP identification number, the incorporation date, the registered address, the current status of the entity, and an index of charges registered against it showing the charge holder, the dates of creation, modification and satisfaction, the amount and the asset holder.

Two readings are worth making. The status field tells you whether the entity is active, under strike off or dormant, which is information you will not get from the supplier. The index of charges tells you which lenders hold security over the business and whether those charges have been satisfied. That is not a solvency verdict and you should not treat it as one, but a long list of unsatisfied charges is a reason to take a credit report before extending open account terms. Payment terms for a first import from India covers the instruments that manage that exposure.

Now the part that matters more, and that costs a manufacturer business to say. A large number of capable Indian exporters are sole proprietorships or registered partnership firms, and none of them appear on the MCA register at all. The register covers companies and LLPs. If you search a supplier’s name and find nothing, you have not found a red flag. You have found out that the entity is not a company or an LLP, which the constitution of business field on the GST record already told you. Treating absence from MCA as evidence of a problem will lead you to reject good small manufacturers and keep bad incorporated traders, which is exactly the wrong way round.

Verifying a certificate instead of looking at the PDF

A PDF is a picture of a certificate. The register behind it is the certificate.

From 1 January 2026, Global Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated took over the roles previously held by the International Accreditation Forum and the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation. It operates CertSearch, a database of accredited management system certificates, at iafcertsearch.org. Public users get three free verifications a day, or thirty with a free registered account, which is more than enough to check a shortlist.

Three checks, in order of value.

Is the certificate live, and is the certification body accredited? That is what CertSearch answers directly. A certificate issued by a body that is not accredited by a signatory accreditation body will not appear in the database at all. That is not automatically fraud, and some real certificates sit outside the accredited system, but it means the certificate carries no independent backing and should be read as a supplier statement rather than third party evidence.

Read the scope statement, not the standard number. An ISO 9001 certificate whose scope reads “trading and export of disposable tableware” is a real certificate that says the holder trades. An ISO 22000 certificate whose scope names manufacture of the article is a different claim. The scope line is where certificates are misread most often.

Check the site address on the certificate against the GST principal place of business and the address on the packing list. A certificate naming a site that appears nowhere else in the supplier’s documents usually means the certified site and the producing site are not the same place. What a remote audit can and cannot verify is the follow up when they do not reconcile.

A better check than a chamber of commerce logo

Buyers often ask a supplier for chamber of commerce membership. A membership certificate is easy to obtain and proves participation, not capability.

Certificates of origin for Indian exports are issued through the Common Digital Platform run by DGFT, and all designated issuing agencies are required to work through that portal. DGFT also publishes Appendix 2E, the list of agencies authorised to issue non-preferential certificates of origin. So instead of asking whether a supplier belongs to a chamber, ask which agency will issue your certificate of origin and check that agency against DGFT’s own authorised list. That verifies something you will actually rely on at EU entry. What a certificate of origin proves and who issues it sets out the document itself.

The reconciliation that does the real work

Each record on its own is weak. Run side by side, they produce a single test: does one entity appear consistently across all of them?

Put these seven items in a column and fill them in before you pay anything.

1. Legal entity name on the GST record.
2. Firm name on the IEC record.
3. Entity name and status on the MCA record, if the constitution of business says company or LLP.
4. Certificate holder name and site address on each ISO certificate, checked in CertSearch.
5. Principal place of business on the GST record.
6. Entity name and address on the proforma invoice.
7. Account holder name on the bank details you have been given.

Items one, two, three, four, six and seven should be the same legal entity. Items four and five should be the same address, or the difference should be explained by a registered office that differs from the works. And item seven is the line that stops the largest losses in this trade: if the bank account is in a different name from the invoicing entity, or in a different country, stop and resolve it before any money moves. Payment instructions arriving by email that change previously agreed bank details are the standard shape of an invoice fraud, and confirming them on a phone number you already had, not one from the email, costs five minutes.

What none of this proves

Say this out loud in your own file, because a clean verification pack has a way of becoming a quality assurance in someone’s memory.

It does not prove the supplier manufactures. Registration, tax and incorporation records are indifferent to whether a firm presses plates or buys them. That question has its own method.

It does not prove capacity, quality or consistency. Those come from a sample carton run to a written protocol, a first production inspection and a specification. What to test when the sample carton arrives is the next step after this one, not a substitute for it.

It does not prove solvency. A live GSTIN and an active company status are not a credit assessment. Take a credit report if your exposure justifies it.

It does not prove the goods will arrive. Trade references, a pre shipment inspection and a payment instrument do that work. Trade reference calls should come after these searches, because the searches are free and fast and sometimes end the process.

Run it on Foliware as well

This procedure was written to be run on any Indian exporter, and it should be run on this one. Foliware India LLP is a limited liability partnership, so it sits on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs register and can be searched there by name. It holds an Importer Exporter Code that can be checked on the DGFT lookup, a GST registration that can be searched on the GST portal, and ISO 22000:2018 and ISO 9001:2015 certification whose certificate numbers can be put into CertSearch. Ask for the entity name, the IEC, the GSTIN and the certificate numbers in one email, and check them yourself rather than taking the summary. A supplier who resists that request has told you something useful at no cost to you.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• Manufacturer or trader: how to read a B2B directory listing
• Auditing a supplier you cannot visit: what a remote audit can and cannot verify
• Trade reference calls: what to ask another buyer about a supplier
• Certificate of origin: what it proves and who issues it
• What to test when the sample carton arrives

References