What an Indian GST Number Tells You About a Supplier

An Indian GST number (GSTIN) tells you which state the business is registered in and gives you its PAN, the tax identity that links its export code and other records. Look it up and you also learn whether it is active and whether it can export at all. What it doesn't do is prove the supplier makes anything, but read it right and in about five minutes you'll know whether the business in front of you is the one it claims to be.

Most advice stops at "ask for the GST number", which is a bit like asking for a passport and never opening it. Here I'll open it up, character by character, with one worked example. The caveat - I'm sticking to the number itself. The full set of checks across every Indian record is on supplier signals and how to check a supplier yourself.

1. How the 15 Characters of a GSTIN Break Down

India's GST rules build every GSTIN from a fixed recipe - two characters of state code, ten of PAN, two of "entity code" and one check character (CGST Rules, rule 10(1) (opens in a new tab)). Here's a made-up one so you can see it. It's fictional and won't match any real business.

33ABCDE1234F1Z5

• 33 is the state. Commercial GST code lists give 33 for Tamil Nadu, 07 for Delhi, 27 for Maharashtra, 24 for Gujarat and 09 for Uttar Pradesh. Check the state name on the portal result rather than trusting a list.
• ABCDE1234F is the PAN, the business's income-tax identity.
• 1Z is the entity code. We don't interpret it.
• 5 is a check character, there to catch typos.

That's it, nothing magic. The state code and the PAN do a lot of the heavy lifting though, as you'll see.

2. The State Code Should Match the Factory

GST is registered state by state, and a business registers in each state it supplies from (CGST Act s.22 and s.25 (opens in a new tab)). So a knitwear unit shipping out of Tiruppur should have a Tamil Nadu GSTIN starting 33.

What if the "Tiruppur factory" sends you a GSTIN starting 07, a Delhi number? Don't panic.

There are three ordinary explanations - the company also has a Tamil Nadu registration it didn't send you, the factory belongs to a partner who does the making, or it's a Delhi office that buys from Tiruppur. All three are perfectly legitimate ways to do business. You just want to know which one you're dealing with, so ask for the GSTIN that covers the address where your goods will be made. And a big-city address on its own doesn't prove you've got a trader either, as is a city address a trader sign? explains.

3. The PAN Links the GST Number to the Export Code

Hardly anyone uses this bit, and it's the most useful part of the number. India's export code (IEC) is the same as the business's PAN, and only one IEC is issued per PAN (Foreign Trade Policy 2023, para 2.05 (opens in a new tab)). So you don't need to ask for the export code separately - take characters 3 to 12, add the first three letters of the legal name and run DGFT's free View Any IEC (opens in a new tab) lookup.

The PAN also tells you whether all the paperwork belongs to one legal person. The legal name should be identical on the GST record, the export code, the company register and the bank account on the invoice. A different trade name is normal, but a legal name that changes from record to record is a question worth asking. If the IEC shows as deactivated or denied, read what those two statuses mean before you start worrying.

4. What the Public GST Search Shows

Put the number into the free GST taxpayer search (opens in a new tab) (a captcha, no login). According to the GSTN user manual, you'll see the legal and trade names, status, effective date of registration, constitution of business (company, partnership, proprietor), principal place of business, the kind of activity at each premises, and a table of every return filed with its filing date.

Four fields are worth your time -

Taxpayer Type

Regular or composition, and this one decides whether the business can export. A composition taxpayer can't make inter-state supplies, and exports count as inter-state (CGST Act s.10(2)(c) (opens in a new tab), IGST Act s.7(5)(a) (opens in a new tab)). If a composition supplier quotes you FOB then somebody else will be the exporter, often because a small maker ships through a merchant exporter, which is fine. Just ask whose IEC and whose shipping bill.

Status

Active, suspended or cancelled. A cancelled registration is one of the few things that ends the conversation on its own.

Effective Date

It's the date the business became liable for GST, not the date it was founded, and GST itself only began in July 2017. A firm claiming "since 1985" with a 2024 GSTIN may simply have restructured, which is common in family businesses, so ask what the older entity was called.

The Filing Table

Monthly filers who miss six months in a row, or quarterly filers who miss two quarters, are in cancellation territory (CGST Rules, rule 21 (opens in a new tab)). Check the filing frequency first though, because a quarterly filer isn't skipping months. When lots of periods share one filing date, the business caught up in one sitting, and that's worth a polite question.

5. A Worked Example of the Five-Minute Check

Here's the check, in order -

1. Read the first two characters and confirm the state matches where your goods will be made.
2. Put the GSTIN into the free GST taxpayer search and note the taxpayer type, status, effective date and filing table.
3. Take characters 3 to 12 (the PAN) and run DGFT's View Any IEC lookup.
4. Check the legal name is identical on the GST record, the export code and the bank account on the invoice.

Say a buyer in Auckland gets a quote from "a Tiruppur knitwear manufacturer". The GSTIN starts 33, so Tamil Nadu, good. The portal shows a private company, regular taxpayer, active since 2018, factory and manufacturing ticked at a Tiruppur address and unbroken monthly filing for the last two years, and when she runs characters 3 to 12 through the IEC lookup she finds an active code under the same legal name.

What has she learned? That this is one real, working, registered business in the right state, able to export under its own name. And what hasn't she learned? Whether it makes the goods. The factory tick on GST is self-declared and nobody inspected the floor before it was ticked (GSTN registration manual), so capacity, quality and who actually sews her order are still open, and those need a visit, a video walk-through or an inspection.

That's the honest limit of a GST number. It is a strong "this business exists and is what it says on paper" check and a weak "they make it" check.

6. What a GSTIN Can't Tell You

It can't tell you quality, capacity or whether the work goes out to partner units. Job work is normal in Indian clusters and isn't a red flag on its own (job work and subcontracting in India). Nor can it prove the person emailing you actually works for the business, so match the bank account name on the invoice to the GST legal name and confirm any change of bank details by phone.

If you'd like someone to run the deeper checks, including the logged-in GST view only an Indian GST-registered user can see, SourcingSync (opens in a new tab) does that work. Otherwise start with the number. It's free and it takes five minutes.

Questions Buyers Ask