Pick the marketplace by category, not by size
India's marketplaces serve different audiences, price expectations and content standards. Fashion brands may consider Myntra or Ajio, beauty brands Nykaa, general categories Amazon.in or Flipkart, and premium products Tata CLiQ. Quick-commerce can be relevant for some everyday categories. The product and intended buyer should guide the choice, rather than the size of a platform alone.
For a European brand entering India for the first time, the choice of marketplace should follow the product rather than brand ambition. A skincare range is better served by a listing on Nykaa than a generic storefront on a broad marketplace, because category marketplaces bring buyers who are already searching with intent, along with merchandising formats built for that category.
It is worth resisting the temptation to list everywhere at once. Each marketplace has its own onboarding process, content standards and account management relationship, and spreading attention too thinly in the early months makes it harder to learn anything useful from the data each platform provides.
You need a locally registered seller
Selling into India requires a functioning tax and import position before any marketplace account can go live. A GST registration is needed to act as a seller of record, and someone in the chain must hold Importer Exporter Code (IEC) registration to bring goods into the country legally. In the early stages, many European brands work through a local importer or distributor who already holds these registrations, rather than setting up an Indian entity from day one.
This approach lets a brand start trading without the time and cost of incorporating locally. An own entity can follow later, once sales volumes and marketplace performance justify the investment. The important point is that GST, importer and IEC arrangements are not optional extras to sort out after launch; they determine who can legally list, invoice and ship.
Build the price from the shelf backwards
The price a customer sees on a marketplace listing is the end of a chain of deductions, not the starting point. Import duty and GST are applied before goods reach a warehouse, marketplace commissions are taken on each sale, logistics and fulfilment costs apply to both outbound delivery and returns, and promotional spend or discounting is layered on top to stay visible in search and category pages.
Brands that set a shelf price first and only later work out whether it covers these costs tend to find the margin has disappeared before they have begun. The more reliable method is to start from a target shelf price, strip out duty, GST, commission, logistics, returns provision and promotional spend in that order, and see what is left. If the remaining margin is too thin, the answer usually lies in sourcing, pack size or positioning, not in hoping returns and promotions will be lower than typical.
Labelling and compliance come first
Legal Metrology declarations, such as Maximum Retail Price (MRP) and importer details, need to be checked before goods are sold. Some categories need BIS certification, food may require FSSAI licensing, and cosmetics may require CDSCO registration. Which requirements apply depends on the product, so check category by category rather than assuming that its European classification answers the question. These requirements can decide your launch date.
None of this is a one-off task completed before launch and then forgotten. Packaging artwork, labelling and certifications need to stay current as product lines change, and a marketplace account can be suspended quickly if a listing is found not to match what the law requires.
Content wins the click
Indian marketplace shoppers rely heavily on listing content to make a decision, often without ever seeing the product in person. Clear images, accurate sizing or usage information, and a plain, unembellished product story all matter more than they might on a market where buyers can touch and try before buying. Reviews and ratings carry particular weight, and a new listing with no review history is at a real disadvantage against established competitors, however strong the brand is in its home market.
A sensible first 90 days
Given all of this, the first 90 days are best treated as a controlled test rather than a full launch. A focused range of products, listed on one or perhaps two marketplaces, gives a brand the chance to run genuine price and content tests and see what actually converts, without the complexity of managing many platforms, many SKUs and many compliance checks simultaneously. The lessons from that narrow test, on pricing, content and category fit, are what should guide any wider rollout that follows.