Contract, supplier and compliance management for manufacturers

The Labour Codes are in force; the Factories Act is repealed

The four Labour Codes, the Code on Wages, 2019, the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the Code on Social Security, 2020 and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, took effect on 21 November 2025, consolidating 29 labour laws. Section 143 of the OSH Code repeals the Factories Act, 1948 and the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, while saving licences, registrations and orders made under them until they are replaced. The Ministry's FAQs confirm that the Code definition of wages applies from 21 November 2025, that appointment letters are mandatory for all workers, that fixed-term employees earn gratuity after one year, and that the principal employer must provide welfare facilities to contract labour. Factory licences, contractor licences and plant-level registers therefore continue, but the instruments they cite, the renewal rules and the wage base in every employment and contractor agreement have changed.

• IntelloComply: plant-wise obligations for licence renewals, returns and registers under the Codes, with owners, evidence and escalation.
• IntelloContract: contractor and labour-supply agreements re-based on the Code definition of wages, with the principal-employer welfare obligations written in.

MSME suppliers: 45 days, compound interest and a tax cost

Under sections 15 and 16 of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Act, 2006, a buyer must pay a micro or small enterprise by the agreed date, and no agreed period may exceed 45 days from acceptance; a defaulting buyer owes compound interest with monthly rests at three times the RBI bank rate. The Ministry of MSME's Samadhaan portal lets a Udyam-registered supplier refer a delayed payment to the state Micro and Small Enterprises Facilitation Council, which is to decide within 90 days. Since the Finance Act 2023, a buyer's deduction for a payment to a micro or small enterprise made beyond the section 15 limit is allowed only in the year it is actually paid. The practical consequence is that a supplier's Udyam status must be captured at onboarding and the payment term in every purchase agreement capped accordingly.

• IntelloVendor captures Udyam registration during onboarding and flags MSE suppliers to procurement.
• IntelloContract's AI review flags any payment term over 45 days on a flagged supplier's agreement before approval.

Product standards: BIS quality control orders

Under section 16 of the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 2016, the Central Government may make the Standard Mark compulsory for notified goods by a quality control order; section 17 then prohibits manufacturing, importing, distributing, selling or storing those goods without the mark under a valid licence, and section 29(3) punishes contravention with imprisonment of up to two years and fines that start at ₹2 lakh and can reach ten times the value of the goods. BIS publishes the live list of goods under compulsory certification. Supply, import and distribution agreements for covered goods should warrant a valid BIS licence or registration and allocate storage and recall liability, and procurement should check the list at purchase-order stage.

Environment and legal metrology

A plant needs the prior consent of the State Pollution Control Board to establish and to operate under section 21 of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 and section 25 of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974; consents are time-limited and conditional, so plant leases, EPC and operations contracts must allocate who holds, renews and bears the conditions of each consent. Under the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 and the Packaged Commodities Rules, 2011, pre-packaged goods must carry prescribed declarations and weighing instruments must be verified before use, so contract-manufacturing and co-packing agreements must assign responsibility for labels and verification.

Stamp duty decides whether the contract is enforceable

Section 35 of the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 bars an instrument chargeable with duty from being admitted in evidence or acted upon unless it is duly stamped. Duty on agreements is set by each state: Maharashtra charges agreements under its Stamp Act schedule and accepts electronic payment; Karnataka runs e-stamping under rules first made in 2009. A supply or works agreement executed in a state with unpaid or short-paid duty cannot be enforced in court or arbitration until duty and penalty are paid. IntelloContract manages stamp inventory, allocation and digital e-stamping as a step before signature, so the duty is paid in the right state every time.

Why one platform

A supplier's Udyam status, its BIS licence, its payment term and its contract are one record. IntelloSync keeps the contract, the vendor record, the obligation and the evidence on one repository with one permission model. IntelloContract drafts and negotiates agreements as real Word documents, routes approvals and executes with Aadhaar eSign, DSC or virtual signatures and e-stamping. IntelloVendor onboards and risk-scores third parties. IntelloComply puts statutory and contractual obligations on a calendar with owners, reminders, evidence and an audit trail. IntelloVault stores and indexes every signed document. Pricing is per module with unlimited users, and the platform is ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified.