Software stack to launch a D2C e-commerce brand in India

Stand up a branded storefront you can list products and take orders on.

The storefront sets your monthly cost, how fast you launch, and how much you can customise, so match it to your budget and product range now.

Shopify is the fastest route to a polished, reliable store and bills in INR for India, though it is the priciest and adds app costs. Dukaan is the India-first, low-cost pick to launch a first store quickly. WooCommerce is free and the most flexible if you already run WordPress and can handle hosting and maintenance yourself. Choose Shopify for speed and polish, Dukaan for lowest cost, WooCommerce for control.

Let buyers pay the way Indians actually pay, online and on delivery.

UPI dominates Indian online payments and a large share of shoppers still want cash on delivery, so your gateway must handle both cleanly with INR settlement and GST invoicing.

Both are India-built, RBI-licensed, and INR-billed, so there is no forex layer on your revenue. Cashfree is a strong default with UPI, cards, netbanking, and payouts and a freemium start; PhonePe Payment Gateway is a solid alternative with deep UPI reach. Enable COD through your shipping aggregator rather than the gateway, since COD is a logistics flow, not a card transaction.

Move orders to customers nationwide and manage COD remittance and returns.

Shipping is where D2C margins leak in India, through return-to-origin on COD and courier pincode gaps, so an aggregator that compares couriers and handles remittance matters as much as the store itself.

All three are India-built shipping aggregators with multi-courier rates, tracking, and COD remittance, and all have freemium starts billed in INR. Shiprocket is the widely used default with the broadest courier network; NimbusPost and iThink Logistics are worth quoting against it, since rates and serviceable pincodes vary by lane. Compare on your actual shipping lanes and COD terms, not just headline rates.

Send order updates, recover abandoned carts, and bring buyers back, on WhatsApp.

In India WhatsApp order updates and cart-recovery messages open and convert far better than email, so it is a core revenue channel for D2C, not just support.

All three run on the official WhatsApp Business API and are built for Indian commerce. Interakt is INR-billed and strong on commerce and catalog flows; Zoko is built for D2C and Shopify sellers with a team inbox and broadcasts (billed in USD); Gallabox suits teams wanting a shared inbox with no-code chatbots. Pick Interakt or Gallabox to stay INR-billed, Zoko if its Shopify-native flows fit how you sell.

Produce product creative and copy, and bring buyers back through email.

A D2C brand lives on a steady stream of product visuals, ad copy, and lifecycle email, and doing this in-house keeps launch costs down.

Canva covers product graphics, social posts, and ads with a generous free tier and is the practical default for a small team. Jasper AI helps write on-brand product and ad copy at volume but bills in USD, so use it only if copy is a bottleneck. Mailchimp handles newsletters and automated flows and offers INR billing with a free tier. Start with Canva plus Mailchimp and add an AI copy tool only when you need the throughput.