By Navneet, Chief Regulatory Expert at Regbite

The Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Amendment Regulations, 2026 were notified on 10 March 2026, with the revised turnover thresholds effective from 1 April 2026. Two things changed that matter to every nutraceutical business in India.

Licences are now perpetual

The renewal cycle is gone. Once granted, a licence or registration remains valid indefinitely. It ceases only in three circumstances: suspension by the food authority for non-compliance, cancellation following a formal proceeding, or voluntary surrender.

Here is the part I keep having to repeat: the annual fee is still payable. Perpetual validity removed the renewal application, not the money. The fee remains due annually, and may be paid in advance for any number of years.

So the failure mode has changed shape rather than disappeared. It used to be “I forgot to renew and my licence expired.” Now it is “I stopped thinking about my licence entirely because someone told me it was permanent, and nobody has paid the annual fee.” The second is quieter, and therefore worse — nothing prompts you, right up until it becomes a compliance proceeding.

The turnover thresholds moved a long way

  • Registration — annual turnover up to ₹1.5 crore (previously ₹12 lakh)
  • State Licence — above ₹1.5 crore, up to ₹50 crore
  • Central Licence — above ₹50 crore

The registration ceiling went up more than twelvefold. A large number of small supplement brands that were pushed into a State Licence purely by turnover now sit inside Registration.

Do not downgrade on turnover alone

This is where I see people about to make an expensive mistake, so let me be direct.

Turnover is one trigger for licence category. It is not the only one. Manufacturing, importing, and operating across more than one state carry their own requirements regardless of how small your revenue is. If you import a single raw material, your turnover figure is not the operative question.

Before anyone in your business “downgrades to Registration because we are under ₹1.5 crore,” have someone confirm that no other trigger applies to your operation. Getting this wrong means operating on the wrong licence class — which is not a paperwork problem, it is an operating-without-a-valid-licence problem.

What I would do this quarter

  1. Write down your annual fee date. Not the renewal date, which no longer exists. The fee date. Put it somewhere that will chase you.
  2. Re-check your licence category against every trigger — manufacturing, import, multi-state operation and the product categories you actually handle — not just turnover.
  3. Update the licence number on your artwork if your category genuinely changes. The 14-digit number on pack has to match the licence you hold.
  4. Do not read “perpetual” as “handled.” Suspension and cancellation remain live routes, and both are driven by compliance findings elsewhere in your business.

Regbite tracks licence categories and fee dates per entity and sends the reminder before the date rather than after. That mattered less when an annual renewal forced everyone to look. It matters considerably more now that nothing does.

Status as at August 2026. General guidance, not legal advice — confirm your licence category against the operative notification on fssai.gov.in and your FoSCoS record before acting.

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