Starting a Company in Pakistan

This article states the position as of July 2026 and is general information, not advice on your facts. Fees, forms, and processing times change; anything that changes often is flagged for verification.

Starting a company in Pakistan is a short filing wrapped in a longer project. The SECP part — reserving a name and obtaining a certificate of incorporation under the Companies Act, 2017 — is measured in days. The project around it — choosing the right structure, settling the founder arrangements, and completing the registrations that let the company bank, invoice, and hire — is measured in weeks, and it is the part founders underestimate. This article maps the whole sequence. The companion articles in this hub go deeper on the structure decision, the private limited company itself, and the SECP filing step by step.

Decisions to make before you file anything

Three decisions shape everything downstream, and each is cheaper to make before incorporation than to unwind after it.

The structure. Most founders who intend to grow, hire, or raise money should incorporate a private limited company; a solo founder can use the single member company variant and convert when a co-founder or investor arrives. The alternatives — a general partnership under the Partnership Act, 1932, a limited liability partnership under the Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2017, or a sole proprietorship — suit narrower situations. The choice turns on liability, tax, and whether outside investment is realistic; our structure-choice article works through the comparison.

The equity. Who owns what, and why, should be settled and written down before the subscribers sign the memorandum. The shareholding stated at incorporation is a public record and a legal fact; "we'll sort the percentages later" is the most expensive sentence in Pakistani startup history. If any founder's shares should be earned over time rather than owned outright, the vesting mechanics belong in a founders' agreement signed alongside incorporation, not after the first argument.

The capital. A company has authorised capital (the ceiling on shares it may issue) and paid-up capital (shares actually issued and paid for). There is no general minimum paid-up capital for a private company under the Companies Act, 2017. SECP fees scale with authorised capital, which tempts founders to set it low — and then every future raise requires a shareholders' resolution and a filing to increase it. Set authorised capital with at least a round or two of headroom.

Alongside these, prepare the practical inputs: a distinctive name checked against the SECP register and the trademark register, CNIC or passport particulars for every subscriber and director, a registered office address in Pakistan, and a plain statement of the company's principal line of business for the memorandum.

The incorporation filing, in brief

Incorporation runs through the SECP's online portal. You reserve a name, then file the incorporation application under the Companies (Incorporation) Regulations, 2017: the memorandum of association, articles of association (the SECP's model articles serve most companies with light adaptation), particulars of directors and subscribers, the registered office, and the declaration of compliance. The registrar examines the application and, if satisfied, issues the certificate of incorporation. The company exists from the date on the certificate, with its own legal personality, and the process generates the company's National Tax Number with the Federal Board of Revenue [NTN INTEGRATION IN CURRENT PORTAL FLOW — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER].

Where every subscriber and director is Pakistani, this stage is quick. Where a foreign national or foreign company appears, the application routes through security clearance by the Ministry of Interior, and the timeline stretches from days to months on a clock nobody controls. Plan around it rather than being surprised by it.

The step-by-step mechanics — portal registration, name rules, common objections, what the registrar actually checks — are covered in this hub's dedicated SECP article.

The registrations that make the company real

The certificate of incorporation creates a legal person that cannot yet do much. The working company is assembled in the weeks that follow, and the order matters.

Tax. Confirm the NTN and activate the company's profile on the FBR's IRIS portal, because the company's own filings — withholding statements, the annual return of income under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 — run through it. If the company will make taxable supplies of goods, register for sales tax under the Sales Tax Act, 1990. If it will supply services, the sales tax on services is provincial: the Punjab Revenue Authority, the Sindh Revenue Board, or their counterparts, depending on where you operate. Many startups need both a federal and a provincial registration, and invoicing legally is impossible without them.

Bank account. Open the company account early and put every rupee through it — capital contributions, revenue, expenses. Banks apply full know-your-customer review to new companies, and accounts with foreign shareholders move at the pace of the bank's compliance department. Founders paying company expenses personally "just for now" create the mixed-funds pattern that later reads badly in tax audits and diligence.

Sector and export registrations. Software and IT-enabled service exporters should register with the Pakistan Software Export Board, the gateway to the concessional tax treatment of IT export income [CURRENT REGIME AND RATES — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Regulated activities — payments, lending, insurance distribution, pharmaceuticals, food — need their licences before trading, not after.

Employment registrations arrive with headcount: EOBI and provincial social security registration once you cross the thresholds [CURRENT THRESHOLDS — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. They are cheap to do on time and disproportionately painful to backfill.

The corporate housekeeping nobody tells you about

A handful of Companies Act obligations begin at incorporation and are routinely missed.

Statutory registers. The company must maintain registers of members, directors, and other prescribed matters, and record its ultimate beneficial owners under the requirements now in force [CURRENT UBO REGIME — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Start them immediately; reconstructing them years later, before a round, is miserable work.

The first auditor. Companies above the modest audit-exemption threshold must appoint their first auditor within the statutory period after incorporation [PERIOD AND EXEMPTION THRESHOLD — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Missing it is a compliance breach visible on the public record.

Share certificates and filings. Issue share certificates within the statutory period, and file event-driven returns — allotments, transfers, director changes, a change of registered office, charges over assets — within their windows. Late filings carry additional fees and accumulate into exactly the pattern investor diligence flags.

Founder paper. The founders' agreement, employment or service contracts for the founders, and written IP assignments moving pre-incorporation work into the company belong in the first month. The company cannot have owned what was created before it existed; only a signed assignment fixes that.

Timelines, money, and the honest picture

Sequenced well, an all-Pakistani founding team can go from decision to a banked, tax-registered operating company in a small number of weeks; the SECP stage is rarely the bottleneck. Foreign shareholders, bank compliance queues, and provincial registrations are where calendars slip [TYPICAL END-TO-END TIMELINES — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER].

On cost: SECP fees are published in the fee schedule and scale with authorised capital; provincial registrations and stamp duties are individually small. The material costs are professional fees, which are set by engagement, and the hidden cost of doing it badly — re-papering equity, migrating assets, and repairing filings later, which reliably exceeds the cost of doing it properly once.

The pattern behind most year-one legal damage is deferral: the founders incorporate, celebrate, and postpone everything in this article's second half. The company then operates for a year without sales tax registration, without registers, without assigned IP — and the deferred work resurfaces, with interest, at the first fundraise. Treat the certificate as the start of the checklist, not the end of it. That is what the downloadable version of this article's checklist is for.