Background verification checks for India hiring

Background verification (BGV) is India's standard pre-employment screening process, and if you're hiring there, it's simply expected.

It covers employment history, education, criminal court search, identity (via Aadhaar and PAN), and address verification. It's the norm across technology, business process outsourcing, and financial services hiring, and recent DPDP rules have tightened the consent requirements around it. Like Zinc's other markets, these checks combine into a single package, so the process holds whether you're screening ten hires or ten thousand.

Zinc verifies employment history in India via EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund Organisation) instant employment verification, pulling data straight from government provident fund records through the same route used for Zinc's UK HMRC check.

The connection runs through Zinc's data partner, Mistho, which holds a direct API link into EPFO, and Zinc never sees or stores the candidate's login details. It's also built to flag dual employment, where a candidate is registered with more than one employer at the same time. If a candidate doesn't have an EPFO account, they can switch to manual HR references instead, so the check still gets done.

The DPDP Act, or Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (with DPDP Rules 2025), is India's data protection law, and it affects BGV by requiring a standalone consent notice, separate from the employment contract, before collecting personal data for background verification.

Consent must be specific, informed, and freely given. It can't be folded into other paperwork. Zinc’s customisable self-certification allows you to upload documents like this consent form, so everything’s in one place in case of an audit.

Yes, Zinc accepts Aadhaar and PAN cards as valid right to work proof for Indian nationals, and candidates can upload either straight through Zinc's platform. Citizens by birth automatically hold the right to work in India, so these are simply the documents most people already have to hand.

Zinc also accepts a Voter ID or e-EPIC card, birth certificate, Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card, or domicile certificate (alongside a passport or other nationality document) as alternatives, with an Employment Visa required for foreign nationals instead. A clear result means the uploaded document passed anti-spoofing and facial similarity checks. Anything that can't be verified digitally comes back as ‘consider’, flagging it for a closer look rather than an automatic decision, so the final decision is always in your hands.

Zinc completes criminal checks in India in less than a day on average, so it's rarely the thing holding up your hire.

The check covers a seven-year lookback via the Courts and Tribunals of India: High Court, Sessions Court, Magistrate Court, and Supreme Court records. Zinc searches these court databases directly in the candidate's place of residence, cross-matches any hits against the details the candidate provided, and returns a signed digital report once the case is closed.