Dear Seema, I would like to request you to go through the definition of the term 'industry' under section 2(j) of the ID Act, 1947. There is no stipulation about the minimum or maximum number of employees in the Act other than certain employment contingencies such as layoff, retrenchment, closure. Therefore, if there is a single employee and the purpose of the entity is to satisfy human needs or wants, then it becomes an industry.
It follows that the correlation between the number of employees and the industry comes into play only with reference to the nature of the prime activity of the industry and the application of certain conditions of employment such as wages, bonus, gratuity, social security, etc. For example, if the primary or principal activity is manufacturing, it is a factory falling under the Factories Act, 1948; if it involves the raising of certain specified crops in an integrated manner, it is a plantation falling under the Plantations Labour Act, 1951. Similarly, the application of labor laws relating to different conditions of employment, as pointed out by Mr. Majumdar, involves the nature of statutory restrictions and the complexity of application, requiring the stipulation of a certain minimum number of employees for the sake of ease of systematic compliance.
Apart from this, the nature of the constitution of the entity, such as a Limited Company, LLP, Sole Proprietorship, Trust, or Society registered under the Societies Registration Act, generally has no relevance in the application aspect of labor laws.