Here is a fact that changes how it feels to chase an invoice: if you are registered as a micro or small enterprise, Indian law caps the credit period a buyer can take at 45 days from acceptance of your work. Not net-60. Not "our payment cycle is 90 days". Forty-five. That is Section 15 of the MSMED Act, 2006.
And the part their finance team really feels: under Section 16, a late payment owes you interest at three times the RBI bank rate, compounded monthly, by operation of law. The buyer cannot contract out of it. Since 2024, Section 43B(h) of the Income-tax Act adds one more sting: amounts owed to registered MSMEs beyond the limit are not tax-deductible for the buyer until actually paid, which their auditors must flag.
Who counts as an MSME? You, almost certainly
A creator invoicing brands is a service business. If your turnover is under the micro or small thresholds (and for almost every creator it is), you qualify. Registration is called Udyam, it is free, and it lives at udyamregistration.gov.in. Use only that official site; lookalike sites charge money for what the government gives free. You need your Aadhaar and PAN, and it takes about ten minutes.
The catch worth knowing before you celebrate
Courts have held the protection applies cleanly to deals made after you register (the Silpi Industries line of cases; the point is under review by a larger Supreme Court bench). So the honest framing is: registering today arms every future deal. For existing unpaid invoices it may be contested, though in practice buyers usually settle rather than argue it.
What this looks like in a real chase
- Your payment reminder stops being a plea and becomes a reference to a statutory deadline.
- Your demand letter can cite Sections 15 and 16 with a running interest figure.
- If it truly stalls, the free government route opens: a delayed-payment case on the MSME Samadhaan portal, no lawyer needed, and a buyer must deposit 75% of any award just to challenge it.
Inside Creator Kamai, adding your Udyam number arms all of this automatically: the demand letter writes itself from your deal records, makes the strong claim only when your registration predates the deal, and walks you through the MSME filing step by step.