How to check if a company or job offer is legit

A message on WhatsApp offers ₹1,500 a day for rating hotels. Or a "data services company in Noida" sends an offer letter after a ten-minute chat and asks for a refundable ₹2,500 for your login kit. Before you share your Aadhaar or pay anything, spend twenty minutes checking. Most fake offers fail within the first three checks.

People search "is <company> legit" or "<company> real or fake" every day, and the answers they find are often old forum posts. The method below works for any company, whether it is offering you a job, a freelance contract or a "task".

The twenty-minute check

Do these in order. Keep a note of what you find, because you will want to compare the details at the end.

1. 1

   Step 1: Look the company up on the MCA portal

   5 minutes

   Go to mca.gov.in, open MCA Services, then Master Data, then View Company or LLP Master Data. Search by CIN if the offer letter has one (a Private Limited company's CIN is 21 characters), otherwise by name. Check that the status is Active, and note the incorporation date, registered address and directors. A firm that calls itself "Pvt Ltd" but does not appear here, or one incorporated last month that is hiring hundreds of remote workers, needs a hard look.

   You'll needthe company's full name or CIN
2. 2

   Step 2: Check the GSTIN on the GST portal

   3 minutes

   On gst.gov.in, open Search Taxpayer and choose Search by GSTIN/UIN. No login is needed. The legal name should match the company on the MCA record, and the status should be Active. Characters three to twelve of a GSTIN are the holder's PAN. Small businesses below the threshold may not have a GSTIN at all, so a missing one is not proof of fraud. A GSTIN that belongs to a different business is.

   You'll needthe GSTIN from the website, offer letter or invoice
3. 3

   Step 3: Check how old the website is

   2 minutes

   Enter the domain on lookup.icann.org and look at the creation date. A company that claims ten years in business on a domain registered six weeks ago is lying about one of the two. Also look at the email that sent the offer: a Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo address, or a lookalike domain (an extra letter, a different ending), is a bad sign.

4. 4

   Step 4: Look for real people on LinkedIn

   5 minutes

   Find the company page and then the people who list it as their employer. Real staff have work history, connections and posts going back years. Check that the recruiter who contacted you exists and works there. Scammers often borrow a real company's name, so contact the company through the careers page on its official website, not the number they gave you.

5. 5

   Step 5: Read employee reviews

   5 minutes

   Search the company on AmbitionBox and Glassdoor. Read the one- and two-star reviews for repeated complaints: unpaid salaries, deposits for training, projects that close the week before payment. Check which part of the business the reviews describe; a large firm's office reviews may say nothing about its remote contract work.

6. 6

   Step 6: Ask people who have worked with them

   a day or two

   Search [r/FreelanceIndia](https://www.reddit.com/r/FreelanceIndia/) for the company name. The subreddit has community threads where members describe what happened with specific companies and offers. If there is nothing, post and ask.

At the end, compare. The name on the offer letter, the MCA record, the GSTIN, the email domain and the recruiter's LinkedIn should all point to the same company. Real companies can fail one check (a small firm without GST, a new startup with few reviews). Scammers can pass one or two by copying a genuine company's CIN. What gives them away is when the pieces do not match each other.

Title: Is <company name> legit? Remote offer for <role>

Got an offer from <company name> for <role>, <pay and how it is paid>.
They contacted me through <WhatsApp / LinkedIn / job site>.

What I have checked so far:
- MCA: <active / not found>, incorporated <year>
- GSTIN: <matches / does not match / not given>
- Website domain created: <date>
- Offer came from: <email domain>

They have / have not asked me for money or documents.
Has anyone worked with them or been paid by them?

Leave out your phone number, address and any document numbers when you post.

Red flags that should stop you

Any one of these is enough to walk away or at least pause and check harder:

• A request for money in any form, including a "refundable" deposit or a fee taken out of your first payment before you have been paid anything.
• Telegram or WhatsApp "tasks": like videos, rate products or review hotels for small payments, then a "prepaid" or "merchant" task where you deposit money to earn a bigger return. The early payouts are bait.
• Pay that is far above the market for simple work, such as ₹40,000 a month for two hours of typing a day.
• Interviews only over chat, with no video call and no named person.
• Pressure to decide now: "only two seats left", "pay before 6 pm to confirm".
• A request for your bank OTP, UPI PIN, net banking login or screen sharing on your phone. You never need a UPI PIN to receive money.
• A contract that makes you pay a penalty if you miss an accuracy target. This is common in form-filling and data entry scams; our guide to typing jobs covers it in detail.

Freelance clients have their own warning signs, such as refusing a written scope or asking for "free samples" of real work. Client red flags and when to walk away lists them, and deposits, milestones and payment terms shows how to protect yourself when the client is genuine but new.

If you have already paid or shared details

Move fast. The first hours matter most, because that is when banks can still freeze money in the receiving account.

1. Call 1930, the national cyber fraud helpline. Keep your transaction IDs, the UPI ID or account you paid, dates and amounts ready.
2. File the complaint on cybercrime.gov.in, the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, quoting the acknowledgement number from your call if you got one. Attach screenshots, payment receipts and chat exports.
3. Call your bank. Block any card, UPI ID or net banking login you shared, and change passwords.
4. If you only received a suspicious call or message and did not lose money, report it on Chakshu at sancharsaathi.gov.in instead.
5. Post what happened in r/FreelanceIndia, without your personal details, so the next person who searches the company finds it.

Ignore anyone who contacts you offering to recover the money for a fee. That is usually the same group, or another one, trying a second time.

Where to look for work that is checked first

Most genuine remote work comes from people you can verify: clients who find your portfolio, referrals, and job boards that check listings. Every listing on the Freelance India Club jobs board is reviewed by the team before it goes live, and you should still run the checks above before you share documents. For where real work from home jobs come from, start with our guide to freelance work from home jobs.

If you only do one thing: never pay money to get work, no matter how the request is worded.