An online store you own, with checkout built for Indian buyers

Who this is for

Take a knitwear unit in Tiruppur that has stitched T-shirts and innerwear for other labels for years and now sells under its own brand. The first step is usually a marketplace, and it works: orders arrive. Then the margin thins after commission, shipping and returns, the buyer's contact details stay with the platform, and a happy customer has to find you again among a hundred similar listings. An own store does not replace the marketplace overnight. It gives returning customers, Instagram followers and small wholesale buyers a place to order at your price and on your terms. This page is for brands at that stage.

What the store includes

• A catalogue that understands variants: a T-shirt in six sizes and eight colours is one product with forty-eight stock-keeping units, each with its own quantity and photographs. Sold-out sizes simply cannot be ordered.
• Checkout built for Indian buyers: UPI, cards, net banking and wallets through Razorpay, with cash on delivery where you choose to allow it. Our guide to payment gateways for Indian websites explains fees and settlement.
• Shipping: courier rates by pin code, label printing and tracking links sent to the buyer automatically.
• GST invoices: HSN code and tax rate set once per product, CGST and SGST for buyers in your state, IGST for everyone else, all numbered in a proper series.
• An admin panel: orders, returns, refunds, coupons, stock and customer history, usable from a phone at the packing table.

Payments, cash on delivery and running costs

Cash on delivery is still expected in many categories, and it is where losses hide. A sensible setup caps it by order value or pin code and sends a WhatsApp confirmation before dispatch, so an order placed on a whim is caught before you pay for shipping both ways. Online payments are verified with Razorpay before an order is marked paid, which protects you when a shopper's connection drops at the wrong moment. Running costs stay modest: hosting, the gateway's per-transaction fee and courier charges, with no monthly store-builder subscription. For a working example, see how we built Pirandai Kadai on Next.js and Firebase with Razorpay.

Your own store or a marketplace

Most brands should run both for a while. Marketplaces bring buyers who have never heard of you; your own store keeps the ones who come back, and it is the only channel where the customer list is yours to message about a new collection. The real decision is which channel gets your best prices, launches and loyalty offers. Our longer piece on selling through your own store versus Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho sets out what to compare before you decide.

How the build runs

Discovery starts with your product data: how many products, how many variants, and whether stock already lives in billing or inventory software that the store should read from. Design follows on a phone screen, then weekly demos in which you place test orders yourself. Before launch we push real small-value payments, a cash-on-delivery order and a return through the whole cycle. A full store usually takes 8 to 12 weeks, and a small catalogue with standard checkout takes less.

What a store costs and why

Simple catalogue stores typically start around ₹35,000. Stores with variants, shipping integration, GST invoicing and a full admin panel generally land between ₹1,00,000 and ₹4,00,000. The main drivers are variant complexity, how stock syncs with your other software, courier and accounting integrations, trade price lists with wholesale logins, and how much of the catalogue we load for you. Our e-commerce cost guide sets out where the money goes, including the running costs that follow launch.

When a hosted store builder is enough

If you are still testing whether people will buy your product online at all, a marketplace listing or a hosted store builder answers that question for very little money. Shopify and WooCommerce are both sensible starting points, and we compare them fairly with a custom build in Shopify vs WooCommerce vs a custom store. A custom store from VS Tech Builders earns its cost when you need control those tools make awkward: trade pricing, unusual variant rules, a Tamil and English catalogue, or a live link to the stock system you already run.