Trading under a name for years is not the same as owning it
A great many Delhi businesses operate under a name that customers, suppliers and the whole market recognises, and assume that history alone protects them. It does not, in the way most people think.
Unregistered use gives you a passing-off claim, not an infringement claim. To succeed in passing off you have to prove reputation, misrepresentation and damage - three separate evidentiary burdens, each of which costs money and time to discharge. A registered proprietor sues for infringement directly and carries none of them.
There is a sharper version of the problem. Nothing stops a third party from filing for your name tomorrow. If they get there first and you have no registration, you are the one arguing prior use, and you are arguing it with invoices and advertisements rather than a certificate.
If you have genuine prior use, that is an asset - but only if you evidence it. Under the Trade Marks Rules, 2017, claiming a use date earlier than your filing date requires a mandatory affidavit of use with supporting evidence: dated invoices, advertisements, packaging, catalogues, price lists. Businesses with twenty years of trade behind them often cannot produce clean documentation for the earliest years, and the claimed use date has to be one you can actually stand behind.
Word mark first, for a trading business
For a trading or distribution business the word mark is almost always the filing that matters. It protects the name in every font, colour and layout, which is what you actually need when the same name appears on invoices, signage, packaging, catalogues and a dozen marketplace listings, each treated differently.
A device mark ties protection to one graphic representation. Rebrand the logo, which trading houses do periodically, and the registration protects the old artwork while the new one goes unprotected.
Multi-product businesses and class selection
A Delhi trading house rarely sells one category. The specification and class selection are where the money is either well spent or wasted, because registration is class-specific under the Nice Classification's 45 classes.
File in the classes covering what you sell now and what you will sell within the next few years. Adding a class later means a fresh application carrying that application's priority date, so anyone who filed in the interim sits ahead of you.