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Blinkit Seller Commission: Fees, Chart and Calculator
The complete Blinkit seller commission breakdown with a live calculator: category rates, storage fees, GST and net payout per unit.
CalculatorsAmazon Profit Calculator: India Seller Fees and Margin
A free Amazon India profit calculator using real banded referral, closing and weight handling fees plus 18 percent GST. Every fee field editable.
MarketplacesAmazon Brand Registry Cost: What India Sellers Actually Pay
Amazon Brand Registry is free. The real cost is the trademark: Rs 4,500 to Rs 9,000 per class in India, as of July 2026. Full cost build-up inside.
Moving marketplace accounts to a new entity
Changing the legal entity behind your seller accounts is one of the most expensive avoidable events in Indian ecommerce. A proprietorship becomes a private limited. A new company takes over the business. An acquirer wants the brand under their own books. The commercial logic is usually sound. What surprises people is that the marketplace side […]
StrategyChanging your co-packer without breaking the run
A co-packer change is the only switch on this list where the thing you are moving is knowledge, not data. The formulation is written down. The reason the third batch of the day runs slightly differently is not. Plan the change as a transfer of process rather than a transfer of documents, and run both […]
Operations LogisticsSwitching your 3PL without stopping shipments
A 3PL switch has one hard constraint: the shipping does not stop while you do it. Everything else in the plan bends around that. The work is not choosing the new partner, it is sequencing the handover so that at every hour of the move, some warehouse can pick your orders. Reconcile the stock before […]
OperationsMigrating to an OMS without losing orders
An OMS migration fails in the overlap, not in the build. The configuration work is finite and the vendor does most of it. The dangerous stretch is the two to four weeks when orders exist in two systems, stock exists in two ledgers, and nobody is certain which one is right. What has to be […]
StrategyWhen an ecommerce hire leaves: access and risk
An ecommerce person resigning is an operational risk event, not an HR event. HR will handle notice, dues and the full and final settlement. What you have to handle is that one individual currently holds live access to the systems that move your money, your stock and your prices, and that a meaningful part of […]
Account ManagementThe first 90 days of a new ecommerce hire
The most common way a good ecommerce hire fails in India is not incompetence. It is spending nine weeks watching, because nobody created their logins and nobody gave them one thing that was theirs. By week ten they are interviewing elsewhere and the founder concludes the hire was wrong. Day one access, in the right […]
OperationsTest an ecommerce candidate in under an hour
Most ecommerce interviews at this size are ninety minutes of conversation followed by a decision made on fluency. Fluency is exactly what an agency or platform background guarantees. If you want to know whether someone can do the work, give them the work and watch how they move through it. Set it up so it […]
India PlaybookWhere ecommerce talent sits, and how to read the CV
The hard part of building in-house is not deciding which roles to open. It is finding people who have actually run a seller panel rather than sat next to someone who did. The pool in India is small, it sits in five identifiable places, and almost every CV in it is written in the same […]
Growth PerformanceCampaign Tagging That Does Not Fall Apart at Scale
Campaign tagging is the least interesting subject in performance marketing and one of the most consequential. Nobody gets promoted for it. But every retrospective analysis you will ever run depends on tags that were typed by hand, at speed, by people under pressure to launch. When those tags are inconsistent, the analysis does not get […]
Data AnalyticsConsent, Privacy and What They Do to Your Data
Consent is usually treated as a banner problem. Somebody adds a notice, somebody else picks the wording, and the measurement team finds out afterwards that a share of their data has quietly changed shape. That sequence is backwards, and it is expensive. Consent is a data architecture input. It determines what you are permitted to […]
OperationsWhy Your Numbers Do Not Match, and Which One Is Wrong
Every operator has sat in the meeting. The ad platform reports one number of orders. The analytics tool reports another. Finance pulls from the order system and gets a third. Somebody suggests the data is broken, somebody else suggests the agency is inflating, and the next hour disappears. The numbers were never going to agree. […]
Data AnalyticsThe Event Tracking Plan You Write Before Any Code
Most event tracking in Indian ecommerce is retrofitted. A founder asks why repeat purchase looks flat. Somebody realises the answer is not in the data. An engineer bolts on an event that afternoon. Repeat that forty times across two years and you have a schema nobody designed, named by whoever happened to be free that […]
StrategyCompetitor Analysis That Is Not a Screenshot Deck
Every consumer brand in India runs competitor analysis. Most of it is a folder of screenshots, refreshed before a board meeting, admired for ten minutes and never opened again. The failure is not effort. Teams collect plenty. The failure is that nothing was ever decided in advance about what the collection would be used for, […]
BrandThe Research Corpus Your Customers Already Wrote
Most consumer brands in India say they cannot afford customer research. Meanwhile their customers write to them every single day, for free, in volume, unprompted, and nobody reads it systematically. Product reviews. Marketplace question and answer threads. Support tickets and chat transcripts. Return reason fields. Courier remarks on failed deliveries. Comments under your own ads. […]
Data AnalyticsSurveys Worth Running: Design, Sampling and Limits
Surveys are the most requested and least respected research instrument in Indian consumer brands. Someone wants a number, a form goes out, a deck appears with percentages on it, and nobody is quite sure what to do with any of it. A survey is a good instrument for a narrow job. Knowing the boundaries of […]
StrategyCustomer Interviews That End in a Decision
Most brands run customer interviews and come away with a slide of quotes. The quotes are real. The decision does not move. Six weeks later the same question is back on the table and somebody suggests talking to customers again. The customers are almost never the problem. The design of the exercise is. A programme […]
StrategyInfluencer Claims Are Your Claims: Brand Liability In India
A creator with forty thousand followers films your protein powder. Somewhere in minute two, unscripted, she says it helped her thyroid. You never wrote that. You never approved it. Your brief did not mention thyroid. It is still your claim. This is the part of creator marketing Indian brands have not internalised. You outsourced the […]
India PlaybookComparative Advertising In India: The Line Before Disparagement
Comparative advertising works. That is why brands keep doing it despite the risk. A direct comparison is the fastest way to move a consumer who already has a habit. It gives them a reason to switch that a generic benefit claim never will. Indian categories from detergents to paints to fintech have been built on […]
OperationsPack Claims: Where Indian Brands Get The Front Of Pack Wrong
Brands treat the pack as design. Regulators treat it as advertising. That gap is where most claim trouble in India begins. A campaign gets legal review. Artwork goes straight from the design team to the plate. Then the pack sits on a shelf and a quick commerce app for eighteen months, saying something the brand […]
BrandThe Substantiation File: Prove The Claim Before You Run It
Every Indian brand makes claims. Softer skin in fourteen days. Ten times the vitamin C. Made with natural ingredients. No added preservatives. The claim is why someone picks your pack off a shelf or taps your listing. It is also the thing a regulator, a competitor or a consumer forum will eventually ask about. The […]
GrowthHow to advertise your website: the channels that pay back
This is one of the most common questions we get from founders, and it is almost always the wrong first question. Advertising is not something you do to a website. It is something you do to a specific offer, aimed at a specific buyer, measured against a specific payback period. Get those three right and […]
BrandRange Architecture: How Many Products Should A Brand Have
Ask a three year old brand how it ended up with thirty four SKUs and nobody can tell you. There was no meeting where somebody decided thirty four was right. There was a series of individually reasonable additions: a variant a retailer asked for, a flavour a founder liked, a festive pack that never got […]
StrategyBuilding A Product Cost Sheet You Can Trust
Ask a founder what a product costs and you usually get one number. That number is almost always the factory gate price, quoted per unit, in an email, several months ago. It is not wrong. It is just the first line of a sheet that has fifteen more, and the missing lines are where the […]
OperationsFrom Costed Sample To First Production Run
The sample has arrived and it is good. The supplier has quoted a per unit price. The instinct now is to raise the purchase order and get the launch date locked. Slow down. The distance between a costed sample and a first production run is where most launch calendars break, and where most cost sheets […]
D2CA Stage Gate Process For New Products At A D2C Brand
Most small D2C brands in India do not run a new product process. They run a conviction. A founder likes an idea, a vendor sends a sample on WhatsApp, a launch date gets picked off the festive calendar, and the first honest cost sheet appears only after the stock has landed. By then the decision […]
OperationsContract Terms That Matter After The Honeymoon
Nobody reads the contract while the relationship is working. Service is good, invoices clear, the account manager picks up the phone. The document sits in a folder. You read it on the day it stops working. That is the day you discover what you agreed to. So the honest way to review a vendor contract […]
StrategyRate Cards, Benchmarking And What A Price Includes
A rate card is a sales document. It is designed to be scanned, not studied. The numbers on the front are the ones the vendor is comfortable with, and the numbers that decide your actual cost are usually somewhere else, or nowhere at all. This is not a case against rate cards. It is a […]
Account ManagementScoping An Agency Engagement So Both Sides Can Win
Most agency relationships in India do not fail on capability. They fail on scope. Two competent parties spend nine months quietly disagreeing about what was bought, and then one of them leaves. Scope is not paperwork. It is the operating system of the engagement. Write it badly and every later conversation becomes a negotiation. Choose […]
OperationsHow To Write An RFP That Gets Comparable Answers
Most RFPs in Indian eCommerce fail before a single vendor replies. Not because the brand asked bad questions. Because it asked open ones. Six vendors answer six slightly different questions, in six formats, using six definitions of the same word. The buyer then sits with a comparison sheet that cannot be built, and decides on […]
StrategyThe delivery promise your network can actually keep
Marketing writes the promise. Operations absorbs the miss. That gap is where a lot of Indian D2C margin goes, and almost nobody has an owner for it. This is not about how a delivery date is calculated. That is a separate discipline with its own inputs. This is about whether the claim your brand makes […]
OperationsSplitting stock across nodes: what actually breaks
The day stock lands in a second location, your operating model changes. Not the warehouse, the model. Before the split, availability is a single number and every order has one obvious answer. After it, availability is conditional and every order carries a decision. Brands prepare for the lease and the racking. They rarely prepare for […]
Operations LogisticsWhere to put your second fulfilment node in India
Once a brand accepts that it needs another node, the location gets decided badly. A broker sends a rent quote. A founder has a home city. A partner has spare space and offers a rate. Those are inputs. None of them is the decision. Site selection for a fulfilment node is an analytical exercise with […]
Operations LogisticsHow many fulfilment nodes does a D2C brand need
The question almost always arrives as a capacity question. We are running out of racking, should we take a second warehouse. It is not a capacity question. Space in the same city is a procurement problem and you can solve it in a month. A second node is a network decision, and it moves your […]
MarketplacesMarketplace Policy Disputes and the Appeal You Actually Get
There are two completely different kinds of trouble a seller can be in, and confusing them is expensive. One is a consumer complaint, which runs through a public framework with defined rungs. The other is a marketplace policy action, which runs through the platform’s own rules, on the platform’s own timeline, with the platform as […]
StrategyDark Patterns: The Lift Now, The Complaints Later
Here is the trade every growth team makes without noticing. The pattern that lifts this week’s conversion rate is very often the same pattern that shows up in next quarter’s complaint volume. The lift is measured, attributed and celebrated. The complaints arrive later, land in a different function, and are never traced back. Dark patterns […]
OperationsWhat Happens When a Complaint Reaches the Consumer Helpline
A complaint that leaves your channels does not disappear. It changes address. And the address it most often changes to in India is the National Consumer Helpline. Our own coverage of helpline data found roughly 5.1 lakh complaints filed against ecommerce and quick commerce platforms in 2025, up nearly 14 percent from about 4.4 lakh […]
India PlaybookThe Grievance Redressal Posture Indian Sellers Need
Every seller has a support inbox. Far fewer have a grievance mechanism. The two are not the same thing, and the gap between them is where most Indian ecommerce brands get hurt. Support is a service function. It answers questions, chases couriers, issues refunds and closes tickets. A grievance mechanism is an accountability function. It […]
OperationsSupport Staffing and Shift Design for a Festive Peak
Most Indian brands plan festive support staffing the same way every year. They take last year’s headcount, add a percentage that feels right, and hire. Then the sale lands, the queue blows out in week two, and the team spends October apologising. The method is the problem. Last year’s headcount encodes last year’s mistakes. If […]
Data AnalyticsThe Support Metrics That Survive Scrutiny
Most support dashboards in Indian ecommerce measure the same five things, and most of them are read wrong. The numbers are not usually false. They are just presented as five unrelated tiles, and read one at a time they can all move in the right direction while the customer experience gets worse. A short note […]
StrategyDeflection Without Hiding: Cut Contacts That Should Not Exist
Deflection has a bad reputation in Indian ecommerce, and it earned it honestly. Too many brands read the word as permission to make the contact button harder to find, watch ticket volume fall, and call it efficiency. The contacts did not go away. They moved to social media, to marketplace claims, and to the review […]
OperationsBuild a Support Ticket Taxonomy That Tells You Something
Open the support queue of almost any Indian ecommerce or quick commerce brand and one bucket dominates everything else. Where is my order. Depending on category, delivery promise and cash on delivery share, it usually sits somewhere between a third and half of all inbound contacts. The exact share moves a lot by business, so […]
D2CBuying discipline: the money is lost before purchase
By the time a pile of stock is old enough to worry about, the decision that created it is six to nine months in the past. Somebody approved a quantity. Somebody accepted a minimum order quantity without pushing back. Somebody launched a line with no agreed definition of failure. Everything after that is damage control. […]
OperationsInventory provisions: write-down versus write-off
A brand shows a healthy gross margin every month. Cash keeps getting tighter. Inventory days keep climbing. Nothing in the profit and loss statement explains it. Then one quarter a large charge appears, the margin collapses in a single period, and the board asks why nobody saw it coming. Somebody did see it. It was […]
StrategyMarkdown timing: what waiting actually costs you
Ask a founder when they last marked stock down and you will usually hear a date that is months after the stock stopped moving. Ask why the cut was five percent and you will hear that anything deeper felt wrong. Both answers come from the same place. The markdown was treated as a concession rather […]
OperationsStock ageing buckets: measure age before it costs you
Two people look at the same warehouse and report two different numbers. Planning says the average age of stock is forty days. Finance says ninety. Both are honest. Both are using a different clock. So the meeting spends forty minutes arguing about the number and zero minutes on the decision. That is the real failure. […]
StrategyDelivery Carbon: What You Can Actually Claim In Public
Delivery carbon is a lane where the talking runs a long way ahead of the measuring. That is now a commercial risk, not only a credibility one. Environmental claims in India sit inside consumer protection law and advertising self regulation, and green claims are increasingly treated the way any other performance claim is treated: you […]
BrandUnboxing Versus Waste: What The Experience Actually Earns
Unboxing spend is almost always justified by a story. Someone shows a reel. Someone remembers the customer who posted about the tissue paper. Nobody brings the repeat rate. That is unusual, because unboxing is one of the few brand investments with a clean measurable outcome attached. It is supposed to buy repeat purchase and advocacy. […]
OperationsPackaging Materials in India: What Each Choice Commits You To
Every packaging material decision is a commitment to something downstream. A cost, a machine setting, a claim you will later have to defend, or a waste stream that may not exist in the cities you ship to. Most brands choose on look and landed price, then discover the commitment eighteen months later when a marketplace, […]
Operations LogisticsProtective Packaging and Damage Rate: How Much Is Enough
Protective packaging is the part of the pack spec that nobody owns. The buying team picks the box. The warehouse decides how much paper goes inside it. Nobody writes that second decision down. Then the material bill grows quietly for two years and someone calls it a sustainability problem. It is a cost problem first. […]
Data AnalyticsConsent, Frequency Caps and Message Fatigue for Indian D2C
Most Indian D2C brands discover message fatigue the way you discover a slow leak. Not through an alarm, but through a slow decline in performance that gets blamed on creative, on the algorithm, on the season. The list is not smaller. It is just quieter. And by the time the unsubscribe rate moves, the damage […]
Growth PerformanceCart Recovery Flows That Do Not Train Customers to Abandon
Cart abandonment recovery is the most confidently mismeasured programme in Indian D2C. A dashboard reports that the flow recovered forty two lakh rupees last quarter. The number is presented as incremental revenue. It is not. It is the revenue of everyone who bought after receiving a message, including everyone who was going to buy anyway. […]
GrowthSMS, Email, Push or RCS: Routing Messages in Indian Commerce
Channel choice in Indian commerce is usually made backwards. A team picks the channel the platform makes easiest, writes the message, then discovers the economics after the invoice arrives. The better order is the opposite. Decide what the message is worth, decide how urgently it must land, and let those two facts pick the channel. […]
D2CThe 10 Transactional Messages Your D2C Brand Owes Buyers
Most Indian D2C brands treat transactional messaging as plumbing. Something the storefront platform or the courier aggregator emits on its own. Nobody owns it. Then the support queue fills with one question, asked ten thousand different ways: where is my order. On most brands we work with, order status contacts are the single largest support […]
OperationsPayment And Returns Fraud: Signals, Controls, Costs
Every anti fraud control you deploy will block some honest customers. That is not a bug in the implementation, it is the nature of the trade. The question is never whether a control produces false positives. It is whether the fraud it stops is worth more than the good customers it turns away, and whether […]
MarketplacesMarketplace Reimbursement Claims Brands Never File
There is money sitting inside every marketplace account that the brand is entitled to and never asks for. Not a rounding error. For brands doing meaningful volume across Amazon, Flipkart and quick commerce platforms, unclaimed reimbursements routinely run into lakhs a year, and almost all of it expires quietly because nobody filed within the window. […]
D2CWriting a Refund Policy That Is Fair And Defensible
Refund policy gets written once, by whoever is free, usually the week before launch. It then sits untouched while the brand scales, and it becomes the document that decides margin leakage, support load, repeat rate and the outcome of every payment dispute you will ever face. It deserves more thought than it gets. The mistake […]
OperationsWhat Your Acquirer Does When Chargebacks Rise
Brands treat chargebacks as a customer problem. The party that can actually end your business is one most founders have never spoken to: the acquiring bank behind your payment gateway. You have a contract with them, it has risk clauses, and those clauses protect the bank rather than you. This post is about the banking […]
StrategyServiceability Is a Growth Constraint. Treat It Like One
Every brand has two maps and usually only looks at one. The first map is where you can sell, which for most Indian brands is close to universal, because a marketplace or a courier aggregator will happily deliver to nearly twenty thousand pin codes. The second map is where you can serve, which is far […]
D2CRefurbished as a Real Channel, Not a Dumping Ground
Refurbished has a reputation problem in India, and brands earned it. For years, refurbished meant whatever the warehouse could not sell, cleaned up and pushed out through a liquidator at a price that quietly told the market your new product was overpriced. That is not a channel. That is a disposal habit. Run properly, refurbished […]
Operations LogisticsSpare Parts Planning and the Service Network in India
Brands plan finished goods well. Most of them plan spare parts badly, and then they are surprised when a service network they paid for cannot actually service anything. The reason is that spares are a different inventory problem wearing the same clothes, and the planning method that works for a fast moving SKU actively fails […]
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