A rod-shaped, motile, facultatively anaerobic and moderately halotolerant plant-growth-promoting actinobacterial strain, designated NCCP-11^T, was isolated from paddy grains. To delineate its taxonomic position, the strain was subjected to a polyphasic characterization. Cells of strain NCCP-11^T grew at 10–37 °C (optimum 28–32 °C), at pH 6–9 (optimum pH 7) and in 0–12 % (w/v) NaCl (optimum 1–2 %) in broth medium. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain NCCP-11^T showed highest similarity to the type strains of Cellulomonas hominis (98.99 %) and Cellulomonas denverensis (98.09 %) and less than 97 % with other closely related taxa. The chemotaxonomic data [major menaquinone: MK-9(H4); cell-wall peptidoglycan: type A4β; major fatty acids: anteiso-C_{15 : 0}, C_{16 : 0}, C_{14 : 0} and anteiso-C_{17 : 0}; major polar lipids: diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylinositolmannosides and two unknown polar lipids] also supported the affiliation of strain NCCP-11^T to the genus Cellulomonas . The level of DNA–DNA relatedness between strain NCCP-11^T and the two type strains mentioned above was less than 42.7 %. On the basis of DNA–DNA relatedness, physiological and biochemical characteristics and phylogenetic position, strain NCCP-11^T can be differentiated from species of the genus Cellulomonas with validly published names and thus represents a novel species, for which the name Cellulomonas pakistanensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is NCCP-11^T ( = DSM 24792^T = JCM 18755^T = KCTC 19798^T).