Clearclaim Turns India’s Unclaimed Shares Into a Specialist Business

A market created by unclaimed dividends

The opportunity comes from how Indian company law treats dormant holdings. Under Section 124(6) of the Companies Act, 2013, shares on which dividends stay unpaid or unclaimed for seven consecutive years must be transferred by the company to the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF), which the Central Government established. The holdings are not lost for good. Any person whose shares or dividends have been transferred can apply to the IEPF Authority through the online Form IEPF-5, and the application is then verified with the company concerned.

The pool is large. Business Today reported in April 2026 that nearly ₹2.2 lakh crore of unclaimed financial assets sits across banks, provident funds, insurers and market investments as of December 2025, including ₹89,004 crore in equity shares and dividends held by the IEPF Authority. A second report in the same publication counted those shares across 1,671 companies.

Claiming is mostly a documentation exercise. The work can involve tracing shareholder records, establishing succession, completing paperwork and, in many cases, converting paper shares into demat form before an IEPF claim is filed. That is the gap Clearclaim has chosen to fill.

Seven services, one common thread

The company’s profile lists seven services: recovery of old shares and dividends, IEPF claims, duplicate certificates for lost or forgotten shares, transfer of shares after a shareholder’s death, conversion of physical shares to demat form, provident fund transfers, withdrawals and claims, and nominee claims on bank accounts, lockers, mutual funds and insurance. Each deals with an asset that its owner, or the owner’s family, can no longer easily reach.

Leadership and structure

Shrikant Pandore, co-founder and chief executive, sets the company’s strategic direction and oversees its operations and resources. Co-founder and chief operating officer Hardik Manek heads the operations team and handles the day-to-day processing of claims.

The profile also names a qualified team of twenty-five professionals and an advisory group drawn from accounting, law, banking, investing and technology.

“Our goal is to take a very complicated process and make it simple for investors,” Shrikant says.

Mr. Hardik Manek Co- Founder of Clearclaim describes the operating priority in similar terms. “Our focus is on customer success,” he says. “Maintaining transparency and efficiency builds trust with clients who come to us after years of confusion and frustration.”

The company says it uses artificial intelligence across claim processing, gives clients a written service agreement on stamp paper and offers a full refund if a claim is not settled. These are the company’s own descriptions of its terms.

Scale and results

The company’s 2024 profile reported work with more than 300 companies, more than 500 clients and more than 1,000 DEMAT and IEPF claims filed, with over ₹50 crore of shares and dividends recovered. In a statement issued in September 2026, Pandore said the firm had assisted 1250+ of clients and helped recover more than ₹150 crore. Both sets of figures come from the company.

What comes next

Clearclaim says it documents each recovery from start to finish and runs awareness work on the fraud risks that surround unclaimed assets. It also says it plans to expand that awareness work, engage with financial institutions and use technology to make the recovery process more transparent.

The market it serves is still growing. The Business Today analysis said the number of shares held by the IEPF has risen about 17 percent a year, and their value about 26 percent a year. For a company whose raw material is dormant wealth, that is the number that matters most.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.