In this article, we are not covering registering a business
or any legal advice on whether you should register a sole proprietor or LLC or
Pvt. Ltd. We are talking about things you should take care of before you are thinking of starting of e-commerce business
Vendor Management:
Vendors are the most important part of the entire supply chain when you are starting
an ecommerce site. Should you buy products and create inventory or should you
rely on the vendors and give them the responsibility of getting things
delivered or Just pick it up from the Vendors as and when you receive the
order. Multiple things can be worked out, each have its own pluses and minuses.
It also depends on the types of products you are selling on your website.
Web Portal : Should you have your own customized
development or should it be SaaS(Software as a Service) based product platforms
like Martjack, Shopify, Buildabazaar
etc. Typically, all these Platform
players also provide customized platform to suit your needs. Cost may vary from INR
25k – 1 Lac per month. Also, you can explore the option of getting it done
from small IT companies those who have partnered with Magento, OS Commerce etc.
Payment Gateways:
There are multiple payment gateways available in the market like CCavenue,
Ebs.in, Directpay, ICICIpayseal, HDFC, PayU.in, Zaakpay.com, Linkpay.co.in. It’s
better to integrate with two payment gateways, may be CCavenue/Ebs.in, both are
good. But they are just an intermediary between banks/credit card processor and the
merchants. Removing intermediary will improve payment success rate and reduce
commission charged. So as you grow its important to integrate directly with
credit card gateways like Axis bank/HDFC/Citi/ICICI. Success rate will be much
higher in this case.
These payment gateways charge one time setup fee vary from
as low as 0 to 40k depending upon how much transaction charges you are willing
to share. More the transaction charges less is the setup fee.
Product Display: If you are selling branded stuff like electronics, watches, consumer durables etc. it would be easy to get product images and you don't need to incur any additional cost. But if you want to sell any
unbranded or creating a white label product such as apparels, handicraft items etc. better show it properly. Getting a product image from
studio will cost INR 100 -350 per image. It can be reduced depending on the quantity. You can do it by yourselves too.
Delivery Mechanism: Delivering goods in good condition and within stipulated time is always the key thing
for any business. Bluedart, Indiaontime, Firstflight, Aramax and Chottu.in are
some of your delivery boys you can trust upon. While company like chhotu.in
follows altogether a different model, they claim to be not just your courier
company but one step ahead that helps your sales happen. Where companies are
burning lot of cash by offering COD and rejection, they make sure you lose the less.