Starting an Online Store in India: The Checklist Before You Sell

Before you sell online in India you need five things in place: the right registrations (for most stores that ship goods to other states, a GST registration), a bank account and payment gateway in the business's name, a shipping arrangement, published store policies, and a platform that fits your order volume. The website is usually the quickest of the five. The slow items are the ones that depend on other people approving something: GST, the gateway's KYC and courier accounts.

This checklist is for shop owners, manufacturers and new brands who want to open their own online store and would like to know what to arrange before paying anyone to build it. It explains what each item is, why it holds launches up and what a sensible order looks like. It is general information, not legal or tax advice, so confirm the registrations with your chartered accountant.

#The five things to have ready

An online store is a small business system, not just a website, and each part depends on the one before it. A gateway will not activate without policies on the site, shipping rates cannot be set without a courier contract, and invoices cannot be right without a decision on GST.

The usual order of work looks like this.

#Registrations and GST

Most online stores that ship physical goods across India need a GST registration before the first sale, even when turnover is small. This surprises many first-time sellers, because offline shops often run below the turnover limit for years.

The general rule sits in Section 22 of the CGST Act (opens in a new tab): a supplier must register once aggregate turnover in a financial year crosses ₹20 lakh, or ₹10 lakh in special category States. The same section allows that limit to be raised, up to ₹40 lakh, for suppliers engaged only in goods, subject to notified conditions. Your accountant will know which limit applies in your State.

The exception that matters for online sellers is Section 24 (opens in a new tab). It lists categories that must register regardless of the Section 22 limit, and the first category is persons making any inter-State taxable supply. A store in Gujarat that ships a parcel to a customer in Maharashtra is making an inter-State supply. The same section lists persons who supply through an e-commerce operator that is required to collect tax at source, which is the marketplace model.

#If you sell only on marketplaces within your State

There is a narrow relief for very small sellers. Notification 34/2023-Central Tax (opens in a new tab), in force from 1 October 2023, exempts persons supplying goods through an e-commerce operator from registration when their turnover stays within the Section 22 limit. The conditions are strict: no inter-State supply of goods, selling through operators in only one State or Union territory, holding a PAN, and getting an enrolment number on the GST portal before the first sale.

That relief does not help a brand that wants its own website with customers across India. For that plan, treat GST registration as step one.

#Other paperwork worth checking

Depending on what you sell, other registrations can apply. Food businesses need a licence from the food regulator, packaged goods carry labelling declarations, and some categories have their own standards. These vary too much by product to list here, so ask your CA or a consultant who works with your industry. For the store itself you need a PAN, a current bank account in the business name and proof of address, because every gateway asks for them.

#Payments: what the gateway needs from you

A payment gateway will not switch on live payments until it has verified your business and looked at your website. That review is the most common reason a finished store sits waiting.

Gateways generally ask for business and bank documents, then check that the site has working contact details, clear product pages with prices, and published terms, privacy, refund and shipping policies. Start the application as early as you can, on a staging or coming-soon version of the site if the gateway allows it.

On cost, there is normally no setup fee. As of November 2026, Razorpay's pricing page (opens in a new tab) lists a 2% platform fee per successful domestic transaction with 18% GST charged on that fee, and no setup or annual maintenance charge. On a ₹1,000 order that is ₹23.60. Rates differ by gateway and by payment method, so check the pricing page on the day you sign up.

I compare the main providers in WooCommerce payment gateways in India, including why new Indian businesses cannot simply sign up for Stripe.

#Shipping: decide how parcels leave before you set prices

You need to know how you will ship, and what it costs, before you can show a delivery charge at checkout. The choice is between booking couriers yourself and using a shipping aggregator that gives you several couriers through one account.

Aggregators are popular with new stores because one login covers many couriers and pincodes. Shiprocket, for example, states on its website (opens in a new tab) that it reaches 19,000+ unique pin codes through 42+ courier partners, as of November 2026. Self-shipping with one local courier or India Post can be cheaper when your orders are few and mostly nearby.

Decide four things early: whether you will offer cash on delivery, who pays for returns, how you will charge for delivery (free, flat or by weight) and how fast you can dispatch. My article on WooCommerce shipping options in India goes through each of these.

#Policies and what your site must show

Your store needs a set of plain policy pages before launch, both because gateways check for them and because Indian consumer rules expect them. Writing them also forces decisions you would otherwise make in a hurry when the first return request arrives.

The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 (opens in a new tab) set out what an e-commerce business should display. Among other things, the rules ask for:

• The legal name of the business and the address of its headquarters and branches
• Contact details for customer care and for a grievance officer, with the officer's name and designation
• Accurate information on returns, refunds, exchange, warranty, delivery and shipment, and the cost of return shipping
• The payment methods available and any fees payable by the customer
• The total price as a single figure, with a breakup showing delivery charges and applicable tax

The same rules say the grievance officer should acknowledge a consumer complaint within 48 hours and resolve it within one month. For a small store, the grievance officer is usually the owner, but the name and contact still need to be on the site.

You will also collect names, phone numbers and addresses, so a privacy policy is not optional. My guide to the DPDP Act for website owners covers what that policy should say. Policies are legal documents, so have a lawyer review them if you can; a developer can place them correctly but should not be the one inventing your refund terms.

#Choosing the platform

Pick the platform after the points above, because the right choice depends on volume, margins and how your customers already buy. There are three realistic routes for a small Indian business.

As of November 2026, Shopify India's pricing page (opens in a new tab) lists the Basic plan at ₹1,499 a month billed yearly, with a 2% fee on payments taken through third-party providers. WooCommerce has no plan fee and no cut of sales, but someone has to build and maintain it. The full comparison is in WooCommerce vs Shopify for Indian businesses, and the numbers for a WooCommerce build are in WooCommerce store cost in India.

The third route is underrated. The LuxeKraft store I built for a handicraft studio in Ahmedabad has no cart at all: shoppers find their phone model, pick a design and the order goes to WhatsApp, because that is how the studio's customers already buy. I explain when that works in WhatsApp ordering for a small online store.

#What to prepare before you hire a developer

A developer can build a store quickly when the business side is ready, and slowly when it is not. These are the things I ask a new store owner for before quoting.

1. Your GSTIN, or your accountant's confirmation of whether you need one.
2. A product list in one spreadsheet: name, price, variations, weight, HSN code and photos.
3. Which gateway you have applied to, and the status of the KYC.
4. How you will ship, with the courier's rate card.
5. Your return, refund and delivery promises in your own words.
6. A domain name and a business email address registered in your own name.

The last point matters more than it looks. Domains and hosting should always belong to the business, not the developer, which is how I handle hosting, domain and email setup.

#Do it yourself or hire help

You can launch a simple store yourself if you have a small range, one flat shipping rate and patience with settings screens. Hosted platforms are designed for exactly that, and the registrations, gateway KYC and policies are your job either way.

Professional help pays for itself when money and tax are involved in ways that must be right: payments that confirm reliably, GST shown correctly on invoices, shipping rules that match your courier contract, and a checkout that works on a cheap Android phone. Those are the parts I spend most of the time on in a WooCommerce development project, and the parts that cost the most to repair on a live store.

#Where to start

Call your accountant this week and ask one question: with my products and my plan to ship across India, do I need a GSTIN before I sell? Then apply for the gateway and open a courier or aggregator account. While those are in progress, fill in the product spreadsheet and write your return and delivery promises.

By the time the approvals come through, you will have everything a developer or a platform needs, and the build becomes the short part of the project.