Subscriptions for Indian D2C brands

An organic grocery in Pune sells vegetables, fruit, millets and dairy from local farms. Most of its customers order every week, usually on Sunday evening, usually much the same things. The founder wants to turn that habit into a subscription: a weekly box delivered on Wednesday, paid automatically, with less chasing on WhatsApp and a clearer idea each Monday of how much to buy from farmers.

It is a good instinct. Subscriptions suit products people use up on a schedule: groceries, coffee, pet food, skincare refills, supplements, diapers. They let you plan stock and delivery routes, and a customer on a plan is less likely to drift to a competitor on a whim.

They also add work that a one off order never needs.

Decide whether a subscription is the right offer

Before any software, check three things.

Do customers already repeat?

Look at your order history. If a good share of customers already buy the same items at a regular gap, a subscription formalises what they do. If repeat orders are rare, a subscription will not create the habit, and a reminder message may be more useful.

Can you keep the promise every cycle?

A subscription is a promise to deliver on a schedule. For the Pune grocery, that means having enough produce every Wednesday, in a monsoon week as well as a good one. If supply is unpredictable, plan substitutions before you plan payments.

Is the margin there after the discount?

Most subscriptions offer a small saving or free delivery. Work out the margin per box after that discount, after the payment charges on each cycle, and after the extra customer service that skips and changes create.

Pick the shape of the subscription

Fixed box

The same items every cycle, chosen by you. This is the easiest to run and plan for, but customers tire of it unless the contents rotate.

Build your own box

The customer picks items within a budget or a count, and can change them before a cut off. This keeps customers happier but makes planning harder, and you need a clear cut off time, such as Monday at 8 pm for Wednesday delivery.

Subscribe and save on single products

A customer chooses one or more products, a quantity and a frequency, such as a 500 g coffee every four weeks. This fits brands with a small range of consumables and is the most common model for D2C brands outside groceries.

Whatever the shape, customers need to pause, skip a cycle, change the address and cancel without calling you. Making cancellation hard creates complaints, chargebacks and, under the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, risk around how clearly terms and cancellation are presented. Ask your lawyer to review your subscription terms before launch.

How payment works for subscriptions in India

Payments are where Indian subscriptions differ most from other markets.

Automatic recurring payments

RBI's framework for recurring online payments requires the customer to register a mandate with additional authentication, such as an OTP, when they sign up. The customer then gets a notification before each debit, and debits above a set amount need fresh authentication each time. These amounts and procedures have been revised more than once, so check the current rules with your payment gateway before you design the flow.

In practice there are three common routes:

• Card mandates, where the customer's card is set up for recurring debits.
• UPI AutoPay, where the customer approves a recurring mandate in their UPI app. This is often the most familiar route for Indian shoppers.
• e-NACH, a bank account mandate, which suits larger or longer term plans better than a weekly grocery box.

Not every card or bank supports every option, and some customers will fail to complete the mandate setup. Expect a share of sign ups to drop at that step, and keep a fallback.

Simpler alternatives

Many brands start without automatic debits at all:

• Prepaid plans, where the customer pays for four or eight deliveries up front. There is nothing to collect each week, and you know the revenue in advance.
• Pay per cycle, where the customer gets a payment link a day before each delivery. This works well when contents change every week, though some customers will forget to pay.
• Wallet credit, where customers top up a balance that each delivery draws from.

Cash on delivery for a recurring order is possible but raises the risk of refusals at the door, so most brands limit it to known customers.

The operations behind a subscription

A schedule your team can run

Someone has to turn active subscriptions into orders for each cycle, at the right time, with the right items and the right address. Doing this in a spreadsheet works for a few dozen customers and breaks well before a few hundred.

Substitutions and shortages

For fresh produce, decide in advance what happens when an item is short: swap for a similar item of equal value, credit the difference, or leave it out and tell the customer. Write the rule into your terms and apply it consistently.

Failed payments

A card expires or a mandate is cancelled at the bank. Decide how many retries happen, when the customer is told, and when the subscription pauses. Gateways handle much of the retry logic, but the customer message and the pause rule are yours.

Messages customers expect

Customers want a reminder before each cycle, a chance to change or skip, and confirmation after delivery. If you send these on WhatsApp or SMS, get clear consent at sign up. Contact details and order history are personal data under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and you are responsible for how they are used and kept, including if a customer withdraws consent.

Your options for running subscriptions

Shopify with a subscription app

Shopify supports subscriptions through apps. Support for Indian recurring payment methods varies between apps, so confirm card mandates and UPI AutoPay with the app before you commit. If your store is already on Shopify and your model is subscribe and save on single products, this is usually the fastest route, and it is worth trying first.

Gateway subscription features

Some Indian payment gateways offer subscription or recurring payment products that handle mandates, schedules and retries for you. Paired with a simple store, these can cover a fixed plan well, though order creation and box contents still need handling somewhere.

Dedicated subscription platforms

If subscriptions are your entire business, with no one off orders at all, a platform designed only for subscriptions may suit you better than a general online store.

ShopenUp with a custom subscription module

On ShopenUp, subscriptions and recurring billing are a custom build. They are not switched on by default. What ShopenUp gives you on day one is the base the module builds on: the catalogue, inventory tracking, order management, customer profiles with order history, notifications for order updates, payment gateway integrations, and an API with webhooks.

For the Pune grocery, a custom module would hold each customer's plan and cut off, create the Wednesday orders automatically, apply substitution rules, and connect to the gateway's recurring payments or prepaid credit. Because it is built for that business, it can match how they actually pack and deliver, such as grouping orders by pin code for the morning route.

The build is done by the Code Colonies technology team on 2good terms: INR 199 an hour, a 150 hour minimum, no advance, and you pay after you accept the work. That makes sense when your subscription rules are specific enough that an app forces you into workarounds. It is more than you need if a standard app already covers your model.

Start small and learn

Whatever you choose, launch to existing repeat customers first. Offer one shape, one frequency and one payment route. Watch three numbers for the first two months: how many people sign up, how many skip or pause, and how many cancel. Talk to the ones who cancel. The answers will tell you more about what to build next than any feature list.

The decisions about pricing, discounts, cut off times and cancellation terms remain yours, and they matter more to how the subscription performs than the software underneath.

To see how ShopenUp supports D2C brands with repeat customers, and what we would build for a subscription offer, read the D2C brands page.