Start a business this festive season in India: 14 days to your first order

TL;DR

• • Week one (3–9 November): choose, source, photograph, open the store, add products, set payments and delivery.
• • Week two (10–16 November): publish, tell twenty people, run a small Children’s Day push, get the first order, ship it, review.
• • Then the Black Friday 10-day plan starts on 17 November, and Christmas listings go up by 1 December.
• • Cost: ₹0 for the store. Stock, packaging and courier are yours. Starter (₹199) and Growth (₹499) only buy extras, and you can pay once with no autopay.
• • Start small: one category, 6–8 products, stock for 20–30 orders.
• • The first order almost always comes from someone who already knows you. Message them personally on the day you publish.

The six selling dates and what to sell for each

Pick one category you can source or make, then look at which of these dates it fits. Most categories fit three or four. “List by” is the day your products should be live, roughly ten days before each date, so there is time to post and ship.

Each date has its own post with the full list: Children’s Day sale ideas, what to sell on Black Friday in India, Cyber Monday, what sells most at Christmas, and for January, New Year business ideas from home. The season pages, Black Friday and Christmas, gather the offers and messages for each.

What it costs, honestly

Two kinds of cost. The store and its tools, which are fixed and mostly free. And the business itself, which is stock, boxes and courier, and which you control by starting small.

Plan prices are current. The stock and packaging rows are worked examples; your numbers depend on what you sell.

The free plan is a real plan, not a trial: a published store with unlimited products and orders, 0% commission, UPI and cards through your own Razorpay, PhonePe or Cashfree account, cash on delivery, WhatsApp checkout, coupons with an expiry, the free-delivery bar, invoices, Shiprocket and Shipmozo for couriers, and all 16 store templates, at a free yourname.sitesplaced.site address with a small badge. Starter is for when the store is working and you want it to look like a brand: your own domain, the badge gone, analytics, and pages that answer about 4× faster than on the free plan, about 75 ms instead of about 330 ms, measured on live paid stores on 28 September 2026; “answer” is how soon the page starts arriving, before the photos load. Growth is for when you have orders and want more per order: cart upsells, Buy X Get Y, reviews, WhatsApp Business API alerts. In India both can be bought with one payment, ₹199 or ₹499 once for 30 days, or ₹1,990 or ₹4,990 once for a year, and nothing renews by itself. If you prefer autopay, the code FREE7 gives 7 days free on either; cancel before the first charge and pay nothing. Full details on pricing.

The 14 days, one line each

Week one: build it (3–9 November)

Days 1 and 2 are decisions, not work. One category you can get or make this week, six to eight products in it, aimed first at Children’s Day on the 14th and then at Black Friday on the 27th. Price each one from its cost plus the box plus the courier plus something left for you; how to price your products is the method, and the profit margin calculator does the sums. Buy stock for twenty to thirty orders. If it sells out, that is a good problem and a two-day wait.

Day 3 is photos, and it is the day most people skip and regret. A window, a white bedsheet, your phone, one clean shot of each product and one of it in use. How to take better product photos is all you need. Days 4 and 5 are the store: open a free one, pick the template for what you sell (there are 16, all free, and the General Store suits anything), add the products with the size or age in the title and a three-line description, and make one category per occasion so each has its own link to share.

Day 6 is Diwali. Rest. Day 7 is money and delivery: connect Razorpay under Settings → Integrations or add your UPI ID so buyers can pay the store directly; under Settings → Checkout tick Show Cash on Delivery and Show WhatsApp checkout; under Settings → Shipping set a delivery charge and a free-delivery amount. If you deliver only in your city, list your pincodes under Delivery area and checkout refuses the rest before payment. How to set shipping charges helps you pick the numbers.

Week two: the first order (10–16 November)

Day 8 is the boring hour that prevents the painful week: a return policy, a line about delivery time, one coupon with an expiry under Settings → Discounts, and a test order placed on your own phone so you see what a buyer sees. Day 9, publish. Put the link in your Instagram bio and on your WhatsApp status, then send a personal message to twenty people who know you. Not a broadcast, not a group post, twenty separate messages with one line about what you sell and the link. This is where first orders come from, and how to get your first 10 orders takes it from there.

Days 10 to 12 are the Children’s Day push: a story with the link sticker, a status with the gift, a code that expires on Saturday, and replies within the hour. Children’s Day is a Saturday, so schools will probably celebrate on Friday 13; expect questions that day. If the first order has not arrived by Saturday morning, send the same twenty people a second, shorter message with a photo and the code. Day 13, pack it, book the courier from the order, send the tracking link yourself, and ask for a photo when it lands. Day 14, write down what sold, what people asked and what was missing. Then make the Black Friday category and coupon, because the 10-day Black Friday plan starts the next morning.

After the first order: the rest of the season

Black Friday is one coupon, one collection and ten days of posts, 17 to 27 November. Cyber Monday on the 30th gets a smaller second code on what is left. Christmas listings go up by 1 December with gift wrap as a paid extra and a last order date in the announcement bar; Christmas and New Year sale ideas has the eight-week calendar. New Year is a code with a minimum order for the week after Christmas, and then a clearance until Republic Day. Every one of those reuses the photos, the list of buyers and the checkout you built in these fourteen days. That is the real reason to start in November rather than January: the season does the marketing, and you arrive at the quiet months with a working store.

Paperwork, in general terms

You can open the store and take a first order before any of this, but read it in week one. GST registration is generally required above a turnover threshold and in some other situations; the portal is gst.gov.in, the threshold is not quoted here because it depends on your state and what you sell, and do you need GST to sell online in India explains the cases in plain English. Udyam registration for a small business is free on udyamregistration.gov.in and is useful later; Udyam for online sellers covers it. If you sell food, FSSAI registration is generally needed; the portal is foscos.fssai.gov.in, and how to sell homemade food online has the detail. For all three, confirm what applies to you with a chartered accountant or the authority; this post cannot.

Frequently asked questions