Six checks, all free, most of them official, and none takes more than a minute. Do them before you send your CV — and certainly before you send anyone money.
In a survey of 1,161 Indian jobseekers and employees, 93% said they had come across a suspicious or fraudulent job opportunity, and 51% were not confident they could tell a genuine recruiter from a scammer. That is a hard problem to solve by instinct. It is a much easier one to solve with a checklist, because India happens to have excellent free public registries — most people simply have not been shown them.
Every company and LLP registered in India appears in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs register, and anyone can read the basics for free without an account.
Go to mca.gov.in → MCA Services → View Company/LLP Master Data, and search the company name or its CIN. You will get the registered name, CIN, date of incorporation, registered office address, and the current directors.
What you are looking for:
A company that does not appear at all is not necessarily fake — sole proprietorships and partnerships are not registered with the MCA — but a business advertising salaried roles that has no corporate registration anywhere is worth asking about directly.
This is the check almost nobody does, and it is the most revealing. An employer with salaried staff in India must register with the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation and file contributions. That register is public.
Search the establishment register at unifiedportal-epfo.epfindia.gov.in (Services → Establishment Search), by employer name. You will see the establishment code, address and registration status.
Existing in the MCA register only proves a company was incorporated. Appearing in EPFO with live contributions is evidence it employs people and pays them. A company with no EPFO presence at all, advertising full-time salaried jobs, is the single strongest signal on this page.
A real employer writes from its own domain. Treat @gmail.com, @outlook.com or a lookalike domain as a stop sign — careers-tcs-india.com is not TCS.
Check the domain, not the display name, and check it letter by letter. Substituted characters (rn for m, a zero for an o) and extra hyphens are the standard trick. If the company's real website is example.com, the recruiter's email should end in exactly that.
Ask for the recruiter's full name and role, then look them up on LinkedIn. A genuine recruiter has a history — previous roles, connections, activity. A profile created last month with a stock photo and eleven connections is not one.
Cross-check against step one: does the company they claim to represent match the MCA record? If they say they are hiring for a company, ask which entity name appears on the offer letter. Evasion at that question is itself the answer.
No legitimate employer or recruitment agency in India will ask you to pay to get a job. Not a registration fee, not a security deposit, not a refundable training charge, not a fee for "document verification", not the cost of a laptop you will be reimbursed for.
The moment money is requested from you as a candidate, the conversation is over. There is no version of this that turns out to be legitimate later, and it is the clearest bright line in the whole process.
The same applies to your documents. Aadhaar, PAN, bank details and cancelled cheques belong at the onboarding stage with a company you have verified and accepted an offer from — not attached to an application.
A genuine Indian offer letter is a dull, specific document. It names the legal entity exactly as registered — with the Pvt Ltd or LLP suffix — and gives the registered address. It states designation, CTC with a salary breakdown, joining date, location, probation and notice period. It is signed by a named person with a designation, on the company's letterhead, and arrives from the corporate domain.
What should make you stop: a fee or deposit named anywhere in it; a CTC far above the market for the role; an offer made without a real interview; pressure to sign within hours; an entity name that does not match the MCA register; or grammar and formatting that do not match a company of that size.
It is worth knowing that dishonesty runs in both directions in Indian hiring, which is why employers verify too. In aggregated background checks across millions of cases, 17% showed a résumé mismatch and 13% failed employment verification. Verification is becoming normal on both sides of the table.
Report financial fraud on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal at cybercrime.gov.in, or call the cyber-crime helpline on 1930. Report quickly: for money transferred, the first hours matter most for any chance of recovery. Keep every message, email header, payment receipt and the advert itself.
If a registered recruitment agency was involved, raise it with them in writing as well — a legitimate agency will want to know its name is being used.
Skilyo verifies the employer before a role goes live, and never asks a candidate for money. We publish our own posting-to-hire rate rather than asking you to take it on trust.
Related: Is this recruitment agency legitimate? — the UK equivalent, where the fee rule is law rather than convention. And are ghost jobs illegal in the UK? — the same trust problem, and what the law does and does not cover.
This is general guidance for jobseekers, not legal advice. Company data can be checked free at the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA Services → View Company/LLP Master Data; viewing basic master data needs no login, a fee applies only to downloading documents) and employer PF registration at the EPFO establishment search. Jobseeker survey figures are from Indeed India research conducted by Valuvox, 1,161 respondents across tier 1, 2 and 3 cities and rural areas, fielded May–June 2026. Background-check discrepancy rates are from AuthBridge's analysis of aggregated candidate checks, October 2024 – March 2025; AuthBridge does not disclose a sample size. Fraud reporting is via the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, cybercrime.gov.in, helpline 1930. Current as of August 2026.