How to start dropshipping in India [complete detail 2024]

This is a complete detailed post on how to start dropshipping in India even if you have no money.

After reading this post you’ll learn everything about dropshipping in India. Great thing is you too can start dropshipping in India with no money, just like I did.

This is how much I earn from Shopify dropshipping in India.

I will show you complete working process of dropshiping and how you too can start dropshipping in India without investment. Let’s get started.

How dropshipping works in India

To start a dropshipping business in India you should first know how dropshpping works in India.

Dropshipping is a type of online business which can help you make huge money without working hard. It is one of the most effortless online business available on the planet. With dropshipping you can make huge profit selling simple products.

In this type of business you own a online e-commerce store which requires no money in the initial stages. The best thing with dropshipping is you don’t need to store a product to sell on your website. You don’t even need to worry about shipment of the product. Here is how this all works.

Dropshipping business runs with three important things,

1. Your online store
2. Supplier (example: aliexpress)
3. Customer

As I said before, a person running dropshiping business owns a e-commerce store. Building a e-commerce store online is a piece of cake with the help of shopify.

Supplier in a dropshipping business is a another huge e-commerce store like Alibaba, Aliexpress, Print on demand services, etc. From where you select a product to display on your online e-commerce store with a extra cost, which acts as your marginal profit.

When a customer visits your online store and purchase something, the order is automatically been forwarded to the supplier with the shipping address of your customer. After that the supplier himself deliver the product to your customer.

The best part is suppliers like Alibaba, Aliexpress deliver the products all over the plannet. Hence you can earn a lot of money targeting multiple customers.

Now when you already know everything about how dropshipping works in India, let me show you how you can take advantage out of it.

How to start your own dropshipping in India

I’ll show you few simple steps to start dropshipping in India with no money.

1) Choose a category for your dropshipping store

Choosing a category for your online store will help you build a brand identification. You can’t sell anything you wish on a same store until it is a big e-commerce store like Amazon.

Therefor, you have to select a category of products to sell on your online store. For example if you choose beauty products then you should only sell beauty products on your website.

You should invest a lot of time to select a category for your online store. It is the most important thing to do when starting a dropshipping business.

When selecting a category of products you should always keep a eye on competition in that field and profit margins you can have when selling those product. I’ll give you few examples of category you could choose.

Example of categories for your dropshipping store

• Baby Product
• Wearable Products
• Beauty Products
• Mobile Accessories
• Fitness Products, etc.

2) Research your competitors

After selecting a category for your dropshipping store to start dropshipping in India you have keep a eye on your competitors.

It is very important to know about your competitor when entering into a new business. This is because your competitor already exists in the market and has a customer base and you are newcomer, who have to learn a lot about the market.

Check what your competitors are selling at what price and how are they promoting the products. I’ll show you how you could find your competitors online.

Find your competitors in Google search. Search for the product you are selling on your website. Everyone who appears in the search result are your competitors. You can also use tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs to know everything about your competitor’s website.

You can also search for your competitors on social media platforms. Usually people promote their dropshipping store on social media platforms, so it will be easy to find some of your competitors their.

For example if you are selling baby products on your dropshipping store you can search like “#babyproducts” in Instagram or Twitter to find the people who are posting related to that.

3) Find a supplier for your dropshipping business

Running your dropshipping business with a wrong partner could result in bad reputation of your dropshipping store. Hence, it is very important to select a good supplier to start dropshipping in India.

Alibaba and Aliexpress are the supplier most of the people work with. I’ll recommend take time when researching for a supplier. A good supplier is very important to run your dropshipping store smoothly and perfectly.

4) Build your Dropshipping Store

Building a online e-commerce store for dropshipping is very easy with the help of platforms like Shopify. Shopify is a platform which allows you to build a e-commerce. Store built with the help of shopify are specially good for dropshipping business.

Follow the steps to build your own Shopify dropshipping store.

#1) Signup with Shopify

To build your store with shopify you have to pay a amount of $29 per month which is equal to around 2,200 INR.

No worries if you don’t have money to invest. As I said before I’ll show you how to start dropshipping in India with no money. Here is the link of free 14 days Shopify trial.

Therefore you can use shopify free for 14 days, which is enough to make at least $29 initially to purchase shopify plan for the next one month.

Before moving to next step I’ll recommend you to signup with Shopify to start your 14 days free trail

#2 Selecting a Domain name

Shopify does allows you to use a free domain name. But, if you use a free domain name it will look something like “example.myshopify.com”. I recommend you to buy a domain name for your dropshipping store. You can buy a domain for only ₹500/yr from Name Cheap

If you buy a costume domain name then click on add domain in the control panel to add the domain in your shopify store. As shown above.

#3 Choose a theme for your shopiy store

Shopify has many paid and free themes available, which could save your time in building a e-commerce store.

Check the shopify theme store and select a free theme for your store to save money and time or click on customize theme in dashboard.

Then choose a theme you like. When customizing the theme make it look better on mobile, because most of the users will visit your dropshipping store using mobile devices. You should be from technical background or should not know coding to build a store. Just keep playing around the admin panel and you will learn everything related to the store.

#4 Design your store

After selecting a theme go to customize theme to start adding photos and text to your shopify deopshipping store.

On the left hand side you will see a sidebar. This is the place from where you can make changes to your online store. The sidebar includes header, body and footer of your online store which you can customize easily.

You can also add a logo on your shopify dropshipping store by clicking on the header section in the sidebar.

#5 Add pages to your online store

If you are planning to work for a long time work you should have few important pages on your dropshipping store. I recommend you to add pages like About us, Contact us, Shipping & delivery information (if you charge for delivery), privacy & policy, etc.

To create a page go to your admin panel, click on pages and then click on add page. As shown below

#7 Adding product to your dropshipping store

You can manually add product to your dropshipping store, to do so go to the dashboard and then click on add product.

I’ll recommend you to use apps like Oberlo. Oberlo will help you add products automatically, also when you receive a order Oberlo will automatically forward the order to the supplier. Hence you won’t get busy and do other work along with dropshipping.

Go to the admin panel, then click on app and then click on Oberlo to install the app. As shown below.

After installing the app check the Oberlo settings to know more about the app.

Use Oberlo Chrome Extension to add the product to oberlo import list. To do so go to the product you want to add from Aliexpress. Then you will see a blue tag on the right bottom corner, as shown below.

The product will then automatically get added to oberlo import list, from where you can publish the product on your store.

#8 setting up payment methods

Setting up payment methods is really important for your dropshipping business. You can setup payment methods like PayPal, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, etc. or can also use third party services like shopify payments.

To set up payment methods go to admin panel, then click on setting and the click on payments. As shown below.

5) Promote your dropshipping business.

To get sales after building your dropshipping store you have to promote your business or store. You can do paid promotions or can also promote your business for free using social media platforms, I’ll show you how I promote my dropshipping business in India.

Promoting your dropshipping business for free always good, but you can’t reach to more people with free promotion when compared to paid promotions. Therefor I’ll also recommend you to start paid promotion of your dropshipping business if you have enough money, if not you can however use free promotion methods.

Below are both paid and free promotion methods, which I personally use to get sales from dropshipping business in India

Paid Promotion

In paid promotion you pay certain amount to someone or a company, who could help your store reach more people. Below are the few methods of paid promotion

#1 Google Adwords

With Google Adwords you can place ads on google’s search result page for a specific keyword. The price to place a ad on google depends on the keyword and the competition.

When you pay Google Adwords to show your ad on google’s search result it will look something like these.

#2 Facebook Ads

Facebook is one of the best platform to promote your products and dropshipping store specially in India, where everyone has a account on Facebook. With Facebook you can reach to various people all over the planet who are interested in your products.

The best thing about Facebook ads is you can select the the people who you want to see the ad, for example I want to only show the ads to males who are 18-16 years old and you can also target the geographical location within you want to show the ads.

Facebook ads looks like this.

#3 Instagram influencer

You can also work with instagram pages or influencers who have high number of following. Instagram pages or influencers will ask you a certain amount to put a story or a post related to your product.

This method actually works very well. I personally get high number sales from Instagram.

Free Promotion

As I said before you can also promote your store or product for free with social media platforms. Here is how to do so.

#1 Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are the best place to promote your dropshipping store for free. To do so you just have to join a Facebook related to your dropshipping category.

For example, if I’m selling fitness related products on my dropshipping store I will join a fitness related group on Facebook. You can easily search for a group related to your category to promote your dropshipping products.

Go to Facebook’s search tap search for your category, example “fitness” and then select groups. Then you will see various groups related to fitness. Join the group and promote your products by posting related to your product on group’s timeline.

#2 Pinterest promotions

After Facebook, Pinterest is also one of the best platform to promote your product for free. Pinterest has the great potential to promote products. Many people also use pinterest as a search engine. Therefor it could be a great platform to promote your dropshipping products for free.

#3 Quora

Quora is a popular platform, where people ask questions and some other person who has the knowledge related to the question answers it. It is great place to promote your store or product. To promote your product on Quora answer answer the question related to your category of product.

For example, If you promote beauty products you can answer to questions like how to get rid of pimples. When answer the question you can recommend a product available on your dropshipping store (with a link to buy the product) which helps in to curing pimple.

FAQ

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed my step by step guide to start dropshipping in India.

Now I want to here from you, are you going to follow your daily routine life by giving few excuses or you are going start working on dropshipping business right from now ?

I’ll highly recommend you to not think about what is going to happen after you start, rather utilize the 14 days free trail and get registered with shopify right now. The biggest is to just start.

Let me know was this guide helpful to you, by commenting down below.