The Companies Act 2013 (No. 18 of 2013) is an Act of the Parliament of India which forms the primary source of Indian company law. It received presidential assent on on 29 August 2013, and largely superseded the Companies Act 1956.

The Act was brought into force in stages. Section 1 of this act came into force on 30 August 2013. 98 different sections came into force on 12 September 2013 with a few changes. A total of another 183 sections came into force from 1 April 2014. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs thereafter published a notification exempting private companies from the ambit of various sections under the act.

The Act increased the responsibilities of corporate executives in the information technology sector, increasing India’s safeguards against organised cybercrime by allowing CEOs and CTOs to be prosecuted in cases of IT failure.

The Act established the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), which was constituted on 1 June 2016, based on the recommendation of the Justice Eradi committee on the law relating to insolvency and winding up of companies.^[5] Further, the National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA) was established in March 2018 as an oversight body to investigate matters of professional misconduct by Chartered accountants or CA firms.