What is MOA – Memorandum of Association and its clauses in India

When you want to make your business as a separate entity and go to register it as a private/public limited or are incorporating it, this step of making MOA and AOA comes in. When you are forming these documents, legal advice must be taken as a legal expert can help you to form it better and you will safeguard yourself and your business in a long term basis if your MOA and AOA are well drafted and included all the permutations and combinations of your trade.

So Let me first tell you what is MOA and AOA (Articles of Association) in case you are completely unaware of this stuff. These two are the most important documents that has to be drafted while forming a company. Just like we have Indian constitution which defines all the rules and regulations and all the working flow of our country same way these two articles tell everything about the companies identity, goals,and working pattern.

MOA- Memorandum of Association

Memorandum of Association should have the following in it. This is considered to be the supreme document of any company.

• Name Clause – Name of the registered entity i.e your Business/Company name (name should end with ‘Limited’)
• Registered office Clause – Registered office address
• Object Clause – Aims and objectives of the company
• The Association Clause – Information about its first shareholders and number of shares allocated to each of them.
• The Capital Clause – Share capital, minimum paid up capital etc.
• The Liability Clause – Clause about its limited liability. State the liability of each member.

MOA has to drafted very carefully as the company cannot go against anything that is mentioned in this document. Even AOA has to comply with MOA. For example if you have mentioned under object clause that you will do real estate business in your MOA then you cannot do any other business under this company name.

More about MOA

• Memorandum of Association is one of the documents which have to be filed with the Registrar of Companies (ROC) at the time of incorporation of a company.
• Its Mandatory for registering a company.
• MOA has to be printed and made public to the shareholders and creditors or anybody associating with the company.
• It is a basic document and the companies limits/boundaries and super structure will be based on it.
• Company cannot alter MOA expect for the conditions laid out in Companies Act. Go here for more details http://www.mca.gov.in/MCA21/ChangeCompInfo.html

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