How to start an online store in India: a practical sequence

To start an online store in India, decide what you sell and to whom, set up the business basics such as GST registration and a current account, and choose a platform that handles catalogue, payments and shipping. Then load your products, connect a payment gateway and a courier service, publish your policies, test with real orders and launch. Most of the work is in the catalogue and the operations behind it, and the website itself is the smaller part.

Why the order matters

Many first stores are built backwards. The owner picks a theme, spends weeks on the home page, and only then discovers that the gateway needs documents they do not have, or that shipping a 4 kg parcel to the North East costs more than the margin. The sequence below puts the decisions that are hard to change first.

As an illustrative example, picture a Jaipur block print label that has sold through exhibitions and Instagram messages for two years and now wants its own store. We will follow it through each step.

Step 1: Decide what you sell, to whom, and at what margin

Write down your first range: how many products, how many variants (size, colour, fabric), and which ones sell best today. Start smaller than you think. Forty products with good photos and accurate stock beat four hundred with gaps.

Then work out the landed margin per order. Take the selling price, subtract product cost, packing, shipping, the gateway fee and a share for returns. If a ₹1,200 kurta leaves too little after all of that, fix the price or the range now. Our guide to designing shipping rates customers accept covers the shipping side in detail.

Step 2: Set up the business basics

Before you take money from strangers online you need a few things in place:

• A business form: sole proprietorship, partnership, LLP or private limited company.
• PAN for the business, and a current account in the business name. Payment gateways settle into this account.
• GST registration. Online sellers often need it earlier than offline shops, depending on how and where they sell.
• An address for pickups and returns, and a business email that is separate from your personal one.

Rules on GST registration, invoicing and the e-commerce operator provisions change, and your situation matters. Confirm these with your CA before you go live. Our guide to setting up GST correctly on an online store explains the questions to ask.

Step 3: Choose the platform

You have four broad options: a marketplace, a basic store builder, a managed platform such as ShopenUp, or a custom build. A marketplace brings buyers but keeps the customer relationship. A basic builder is quick to start and fits simple catalogues. A managed platform suits merchants who need some parts built around how they sell. A custom build suits stores whose core logic fits no platform and who have a team to run it.

Choose on three questions: how complex is your catalogue, which rules are unique to your business, and who will maintain the store. Our article on store builder, platform or custom build goes through the trade offs, and marketplace or your own store covers that choice.

Step 4: Build the catalogue

The catalogue is where most launch time goes. For each product you need a title, description, price, variants, stock count, weight, photos and the category it belongs to. For packaged goods, the label details that the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules expect, such as net quantity and the maker's details, should match what buyers see on the page.

Set up categories and tags before you upload. The block print label might use categories for kurtas, dupattas and home linen, and tags for fabric and print. Our guide to structuring a catalogue with thousands of variants applies at any size, and product photography on a budget covers the photos.

Step 5: Set up payments

Apply to the payment gateway you choose early, because approval needs business documents and a live website with policies. Decide whether you will offer cash on delivery. COD brings orders from buyers who do not trust prepaid yet, and it also brings parcels that come back. Many stores offer COD with a limit on order value or a small fee, and nudge buyers towards prepaid with a discount.

Card details are handled by the gateway, which carries its own PCI DSS obligations, so your store never stores card numbers. See choosing a payment gateway for an Indian store and payments and checkout.

Step 6: Set up shipping

Most small stores ship through courier aggregators, which give you several couriers through one account and handle pickups and tracking numbers. Decide your packaging, your shipping charge (flat, free above a value, or by weight) and the pin codes you will serve. Print a test label and book a test pickup before launch.

For the shipping methods, labels and carrier connections that work on day one, see shipping. For COD returns, read keeping RTO in check.

Step 7: Write your policies

Every store needs a returns and refund policy, shipping terms, terms of sale, a privacy notice and a way to reach you. The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 set expectations on seller details, grievance handling and clear pricing. Shopper names, phone numbers and addresses are personal data under the DPDP Act, 2023, so your privacy notice should say what you collect and why.

Keep the policies short and specific. A buyer should know in one read whether they can return a kurta that does not fit, and who pays for the return. See writing a returns and refund policy customers trust and the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules for your store. This is general information; confirm the policies with your lawyer or CA.

Step 8: Test with real orders

Place at least five real orders before you announce the store: a prepaid order, a COD order, an order with a discount code, an order to a remote pin code and an order you cancel. Check that the confirmation message arrives, stock goes down, the invoice is right, the label prints and the refund goes through. Ask two friends to buy on their own phones and tell you where they hesitated.

Step 9: Launch, then review after thirty days

Announce the store to the people who already buy from you: Instagram followers, WhatsApp contacts and exhibition customers. Paid ads can wait until the store converts the traffic you already have.

After thirty days, look at four numbers: orders, conversion rate, average order value and the share of COD parcels that came back. Our guide to measuring store performance explains how to read them. Fix the biggest leak first.

Where ShopenUp fits

ShopenUp is a managed store platform for Indian merchants. Catalogue, inventory, orders, payment gateway connections, COD, shipping labels and mobile themes work on day one, and hosting and updates are handled for you. Parts unique to your business, such as Tally sync or subscriptions, are built for you on clear hourly terms. See pricing, or if you are moving from another platform, migration. Unfamiliar terms are explained in the glossary.

Work through the launch checklist generator to get these steps as a list you can tick off for your own store.