Summary:
This article is for those who want to sell online in India. This article provides an unbiased view of the advantages and disadvantages of selling online in India on both marketplace and own website. This article will enhance your understanding to sell online in various ways.
Introduction to online selling in India:
Since the pandemic hit hard in India, more and more people turn to online selling making it more competitive. Since there is an explosion of buyers who want to purchase their stuff online, there is still a lot of scope in selling online.
One of the toughest question in selling online is how to start. Unfortunately, not much literature and analytical studies are not available for selling online in India. Most of the articles you found online are inclined towards western markets.
Online marketplaces in India:
Although this needs no introduction. Currently, many marketplaces are operating in India. The biggest of them are Amazon.in and Flipkart.com. Spapdeal is a gone case for many though it is still operating and some sellers are getting a good number of orders there.
Also, some new marketplaces are gaining traction among users like meesho and lbb. But these are new entries and people like to buy and sell from established marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart.
Advantages of Marketplaces:
- Easy to start
- No headache of customer service
- No headache for shipping
- No headache for return management
- Timely payments
- More visiblility
- No technical knowledge required
Disadvantages of Marketplaces
- You have to adhere to their policies
- Exhorbitant commissions
- Overcrowded products
- Confusing payements
- No control over return
- Marketplace own products compete with your products
- No control over customer experience
- You do not own customer
- Confusing policies
- Fear of suspension
- High Shipping cost
Selling on your own website in India
In the nascent stage of online selling, setting up an e-commerce website is quite a job. You need a developer to do the minor stuff. Setting a payment gateway and a shipping partner is quite tough for an individual was cumbersome. Banks charge an exorbitant fee for the payment gateways.
Since the advent of CMS (Content Management Systems) and open source shopping carts, selling online has become easier. The open source readymade carts provide an out of box solution to setup your online store. Now even webhosts provide automatic installation of shopping carts for your server.
In my initial days, when I contacted one of the leading shipping providers for their services, they asked me for a minimum billing of 10000 Rs per month. Since those were my initial days, I am unable to commit any figure. For payment gateway, I selected payu and they send me a 70-80 page agreement to sign on it. Also, I have to send the hard copy of the agreement to them to activate their services.
Now, setting up an online store in India is quite an easy job. If you can afford, take a subscription to any SAAS (Software as a service) e-commerce provider like shopify, ecwid or wix, sign up a payment gateway like payu, cashfree or razorpay and you are done. If you cannot afford it, take a shared hosting on any provider like godaddy, install a readymade cart like opencart, magento or WordPress and your store is live.
For shipping, you can sign up for any shipping aggregator like shyplite or Shiprocket. They provide you multiple courier options with lowest rates in the market.
These are the easy steps in your journey of online selling. The tough job comes after this. Setting a store is easy, marketing is the main task.
Advantages of selling on your own website:
- You may develop your own niche
- Ship your order using the cheapest provider
- You own the customer
- No commision to anyone except a small fee for payment gateway
- No fear of suspension
- No one competes you if the customer is your own website
- You own the customer experience
- Decide your own return policies
- Decide your own shipping cost to customers
Disadvantages of selling on your own website
- Marketing is quite tough
- Maintainance is quite a job
- Tough to maintain for non technical background
- Customer skepticism
- Return process cost a lot
- Quality Customer Service
- Complete involvement of you
- Marketing and maintenance both need high techical skills
- Gaining customer trust
Conclusion:
If you are selling for the short term or don’t want to involve much, marketplaces are better as they required less technical skills and less involvement. But if you are thinking for the long term and want to make a strong brand, selling on your own website is any day better than selling on marketplaces. You may be present on marketplaces with your own website, but do not rely on them too much.
Establishing an online selling website is tough, but not impossible. As India is an emerging market and things here are changing every day, a niche website may be more successful than marketplaces.
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