स्तम्भ Stambh · Udyamnīti
Seven Crore Firms and No Firm of Firms
India has registered more enterprises than most countries have adults. It has registered almost nothing that joins them.
Nikhil Sharma · उद्यमनीति Udyamnīti · 24 June 2026 · 4 min read
I run Fabulous.Media, an agency network, and GoCommercially, which prices its services. This column argues for the thing they are.
India has registered more enterprises than most countries have adults. It has registered almost nothing that joins them.
By the MSME ministry’s own year-end count, 7.30 crore enterprises had registered on the Udyam portal and the Udyam Assist platform between July 2020 and 17 December 2025. Of those, 4.37 crore sit on Udyam proper and 2.92 crore are informal micro units brought in through the Udyam Assist Platform, firms outside the GST net and counted because a bank, a lender or a microfinance institution vouched for them. Seven crore. The number is quoted as an achievement and it is one. A country that could not count its small firms ten years ago now has each of them on a register with a certificate.
I want to ask the question the register cannot answer. How many of those seven crore can take a piece of work that crosses a state line.
The answer is close to none, and not because they are bad at what they do. It is because the register counts firms and nothing in India counts the relationships between firms. We have built the world’s largest list of enterprises and no layer above it.
We have counted the firms. Nobody has built the firm of firms.
What a firm of firms is
I do not mean a holding company. A holding company buys the firms and the owners leave within two years, taking the only thing worth buying with them. I do not mean a franchise either. A franchise sells a brand downward to people who did not have one. The seven crore mostly already have a brand. What they do not have is a standard they share with anyone in the next city, a scope and a price a buyer in Delhi could read without a phone call, and one person who will answer for all of them.
A firm of firms is that layer. Independent businesses, each carrying its own cost, each keeping its owner, agreeing to one standard and one price so that together they can take the brief none of them could take alone. In my own trade it is called a network, and it is the reason Fabulous.Media is eight cities of partners rather than eight offices of mine.
The economics are not complicated. Hiring in eight cities is slow and dear. Buying from eight strangers is cheap and uncontrolled. Organising eight firms that already exist is neither, if the organising is done properly, which is the only hard part.
Goods solved half of this in 2017. One tax, one e-way bill, a truck that no longer stops at the state border. A manufacturer in Ludhiana can sell in Madurai without a partner. A service cannot be shipped. It has to be performed where the client is, by someone who is there, and so services need the layer that goods never did.
Why nobody builds it
Three reasons, and the first is the honest one. It is slow. A hire starts on Monday. A partner takes a year to trust and three to rely on. Founders are rewarded for speed and the firm of firms is the slowest thing you can build, which is why the fast money never builds it and why it is defensible once built.
The second is that the centre has to be worth its share every quarter or the partners leave with the clients. An agency owner can be mediocre for a year and keep his offices. The centre of a network cannot be mediocre for a quarter. That is a harder job and fewer people want it.
The third is that the centre has to publish a price the partners will live with, and most Indian service owners would rather lose the national brief than publish a number. I understand the instinct. I have also watched it keep an entire sector small.
The seven crore are a supply argument for India. The point of this column is narrower. The register is finished. The layer above it has not been started, and the people who start it will own the next decade of Indian services the way the holding companies owned the last one.
Written in Gurugram on 24 June 2026. The first column in an argument that the case for India is a supply case and that networks will beat single offices. The register is finished. The layer is not.
Sources: Ministry of MSME, Year End Review 2025, dated 31 December 2025, for 7.30 crore registrations on Udyam and the Udyam Assist Platform from 1 July 2020 to 17 December 2025, of which 4.37 crore on Udyam and 2.92 crore on UAP. SIDBI, Udyam Assist Platform, for registration of informal micro enterprises not registered with GST through designated agencies such as banks, NBFCs and MFIs.