How To Start An Ecommerce Business in India?

Play with ideas and come up with a commendable business plan and model

To have an eCommerce brand and really put it out there, you need to have an idea for the business, a certain vision and you need to have a full-proof plan about how to execute the business idea. Come up with a business idea that piques your interest and you are certain will not fail.

Also, there are certain factors to look into when deciding your business idea and the main one is the demographics you intend to serve and the country which you intend to serve. For example, if you plan to sell woolen sweaters which are worn in the northern hemisphere in a country like India, your business is set up for failure.

After this, you need to decide the business model for your e-commerce website. Usually, there are two types of business models- single vendor and multi-vendor e-commerce store.

Single vendor e-commerce store

This type of store involves just two parties, a single seller who is selling at his store and the multiple customers to whom he is serving. This is easier and more economical.

Multi-vendor e-commerce store

Here, multiple vendors come to your site, get registered, and then sell their products to multiple customers.

Branding for your brand

After you’ve cleared the first step and decided on the business idea, the type, and the product or service you wish to sell on your website, you need to work on one of the most essential steps in the process of opening up your e-commerce brand. That is, to really build your brand. By that, I mean to name your brand.

Naming your brand can be quite a task. You need to come up with an easy yet relatable name for your business. You need to come up with a name that people can remember quite easily.

So that, they can come to your website again and refer it to your family and friends. Also, the name should be familiar to the audience you’re targetting.

For example, in India, you should name your brand something in English or Hindi, or in the regional language which you are specifically targetting. You cannot name your company in Japanese or french simply because it is not relatable.

Register your e-commerce business

This is the most important task in the entire process. You need to register your e-commerce business so that it becomes legal and recognized by the country. It also makes your business extremely reliable to the customers.

For registration of an e-commerce brand, you need to have:

• A Pan card.
• DIN (Director identification number) which is a 3-digit number that can be obtained from the ministry of corporate affairs’ website by applying for the same.
• After getting the DIN, apply for the ROC (registrar of companies) which would officially register your company. Here, you will check if your company’s name is available or not.
• Apply to open up a provident fund (PF).
• Also, apply for the GST registration.

For the GST registration, you need to have an office address. But, in an e-commerce business, everything is online and the internet is the marketplace. For this, you should set up a virtual office. This virtual office allows is best for e-commerce websites that definitely need to apply for GST registration. There are a lot of coworking spaces and aggregators ready to provide you a virtual office for GST registration at pocket friendly price.

Open a bank account for your e-commerce business

After you have officially registered your company, it is its own separate entity. So, the company, in order to fulfill all of its financial transactions would be requiring a different bank account. You can open the account in any bank of your choice but you are required to open the account in the company’s name only.

It is essential to open an account so that you pay and receive all the transactions related to your e-commerce brand.

Build the e-commerce website for your brand

When you are setting up your website, you are required to make your e-commerce website for obvious reasons. For his purpose, you can two from two options, either you can purchase a prebuilt website or go all in on your website by making it from scratch.

Pre-built platform

The pre-built platforms are usually websites like WordPress or Wix which provide a wide range of templates that are readymade and are specifically categorized in the niche that you want.

For example, if you are building a clothing brand, you will be provided with templates that are made specifically for the fashion niche and brands.

Building a website from scratch

When you choose this option and build the website from scratch, you have the freedom to customize the website personally and with the focused vision of building a website that absolutely fits your brand.

Let us take the fashion example, if you do make the website from scratch, you can highlight what niche in fashion your brand is selling in, among many other advantages.

Lookout for logistics

When you are ready with the above steps, you will need to look out for logistics, that is, how you plan to fulfill the demands of orders and deliver them to the customer’s doorsteps.

It also includes locating and identifying the distributor companies and collaborating with them to take your business to the next level.