11 eCommerce Business Ideas 🛒 To Start Selling Online In 2024

Sell 24×7. Your eCommerce website is what you call “always closing salesperson”. In this insight, I’m excited to share 8 eCommerce business ideas [updated 2023] to help you launch your own online store.  Here is a sneak peek into the e-commerce business ideas list:

1. Yoga & fitness store
2. Smart products
3. Affiliate store
4. Grocery and food delivery
5. Jewelry eCommerce store
6. Niche fashion store
7. Sports equipment store
8. Wine store

Find additional 3 eCommerce opportunities towards the end. so in total, today, you’re getting a list of 11 eCommerce business ideas from the GrowthRomeo.com team. Also, when you’re done exploring these opportunities, you may want to read our guides on understanding eCommerce website components, how to start an eCommerce website, and 7 enterprise platforms to build your eCommerce platforms.

Where to start eCommerce businesses?

• You can start eCommerce businesses and startups in India, USA, UK, Australia, UAE, China, Japan, and France. These are the countries with good digital penetration and digitally sound crowds.
• I would recommend starting in a region where you get enough talent resources to build & maintain new eCom tech.
• If you could also open your eCommerce office near an area that helps you in effective eCommerce Ops, that could be a game-changer.
• If you’re planning to sell 10,000+ different products on your marketplace, make use of enterprise e-commerce platforms.

What is the best way to run an e-commerce business?

The best thing about starting an online store is that it can be automated.

• First, set the wheels of an eCommerce business rolling. Then automate these wheels.
• From listing your products on your eCommerce platform to delivering to your customers, automate everything.
• Eliminate your need to run your business.
• Next, all you gotta do is relish double cheese pepper popcorn in a movie theatre with your babe, while your e-commerce platform makes money online for you 24 x 7.

Who can start an ecommerce business?

By the way, a ‘babe’ could be a male/female.

So, I’m not implying that eCommerce businesses are for men.

Instead, eCommerce is an equal opportunity for both men and women.

In fact, it’s a gateway for women to foray back into business & commerce.

Unfortunately, patriarchy planned things in a way that women were subjected to only worry about in-house things. They were not allowed to actively participate & influence the overall operations/work outside the house.

Luckily, this is changing now.

And as part of my contribution to this amazing transitioning work culture around women, I’ve listed a few amazing business ideas for woman.

Assuming that our society wouldn’t allow a sudden radical change, the business ideas for women list suggest non-radical and simple business ideas only.

Why am sharing this list of eCommerce business ideas?

eCommerce business ideas

When countries around the world were opening up for global trade, including India, no one would have imagined that soon the trade war would go online.

• Did you think that you’ll no longer be competing with local and national businesses?
• Did you know you would directly compete with global players?
• Who would have imagined that a single man could disrupt an entire industry?

From Sergey & Larry disrupting how ads & marketing works to Bezos revolutionizing how people buy goods, we have come a long way as a world.

eCommerce is part of millennials’ daily lives now.

eCommerce industry has created a lot of solopreneurs as well. That’s why I like eCommerce business ideas. It creates a lot of jobs.

And the craze is real.

People are innovating new products. And then launching their own brands to sell on ecommerce sites.

I estimate this trend to continue in this decade, that is 2024-2030. And so I’m sharing this list of eCommerce business ideas for you to start in India, USA, UK, China, and other parts of the world in 2024.

How to pursue your eCommerce business ideas and launch your own store?

Online store

To develop custom store websites for your eCommerce business ideas, reach out to IT services companies in Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Patna, Lucknow, Noida, Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Chennai, Goa, or whichever city/capital is near to your location. It’s totally fine to outsource eCommerce website development from a city far away from where you stay. But do proper due diligence and verify their credibility and work experience.  

• You can start an online Yoga mat business with something as little as INR 7 Lakhs to INR 9 Lakhs. Yes, including all eCommerce costs + sourcing price for around 100 Yoga mats.
• The more you care about your customer’s experience, the more you would wish to personalise it. And thus, the more you would need to invest money on your project. That’s the rule of IT projects 🙂 But getting started with Shopify or low-code eCommerce tools is pretty easy.

Connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter for any eCommerce website/app development related consultation.

Why pursue eCommerce business ideas in India?

Ever since India opened up its economy to the world, we have seen a zeal for entrepreneurship everywhere around the country. Reverse brain drain is a reality today in 2024. Indians are embracing technological solutions with stretched open arms. People are taking risks and starting new ventures. 

I’m not sure if any one person can be credited for this bright side of India, but we as a nation have definitely stood up to the opportunity, and I can say – it is just the beginning.

We need a lot of eCommerce entrepreneurs

And I’m excited to share 8 eCommerce business ideas with you. This is because by starting eCommerce stores, you too will be contributing towards building the new India. But what’s the vision for the new India? – an economy where people thrive happily!

I mean, c’mon, you really think Modi’s slogans alone can take us to 5 trillion? You’ve to become not just an entrepreneur, but serial entrepreneur to get to that dream!

eCommerce business ideas for 2024

From yoga mats, fitness products, to cosmetics and perfumes- you can sell anything on an eCommerce website in India.

Read this post entirely to find out the best ecommerce business ideas to start in 2024. And find insights to understand what might work in favour of entrepreneurs and what not. For each of the eCommerce business ideas, we also share the benefits, challenges, and the solutions associated with starting them.

Let’s get started:

Find below the exquisite list of eCommerce business ideas for starting an online store.

1. Yoga mats & fitness products eCommerce business ideas

Yoga & fitness eStore

Start a yoga mats and fitness products related eCommerce store business. Yogis and fitness freaks are a loyal bunch of people. Americans spend $18Bn+ on Yoga related products and services. Yoga and fitness mats market alone would reach $15Bn+ by 2026. That’s a huge opportunity. Launching an online store for yoga matts and fitness products is one the top trending eCommerce business ideas in 2024. It’s a good niche to start your online eCommerce business.

How to source yoga mats to start your online eCommerce store? 

To source ready made mats, you can use AliExpress or a b2b website that helps you source yoga mats. And then you can upload a product catalog on your eCommerce store through which you plan to sell these mats. For launching your eCommerce store – make use of Shopify or WordPress. These are the easiest platforms to start small scale online eCommerce stores.

Read our collection of retail business ideas, and wholesale business ideas.

2. Smartwatch & smart home products eCommerce business ideas

Smart products store

Start an online eCommerce store business for selling smartwatches and smart home products like smart speakers, smart lights, etcetera. Smartwatch market by revenue is estimated to surpass $96Bn+ by 2027 at a CAGR of above 19%. That’s huge, right? 

Well, that’s pretty much an underestimation I guess. 

• I mean – smart watches are like your smart assistants.
• They can remind and schedule your meetings and diet plans.
• They can update you about the fluctuations in your stocks.
• Smartwatch can also show you notifications of latest WhatsApp messages.
• In fact, you can also receive weather updates, shipment delivery status, and whatnot on smartwatch screens.
• It can even remotely help you answer calls or control the electricity of your flat/building. That’s not exaggeration. It’s truth.

I was wondering if I could call it “a remote” for a smartphone. The multipurpose use-case of smartwatches made me include them in eCommerce business ideas list for 2024.

Is smartwatch store a future proof eCommerce business idea?

• Presently, the smartwatch market is solely driven by the value it delivers and a little due to luxury touch – as Apple recorded 30Mn+ sales of its smartwatch.
• And Apple smart watches are damn expensive! Rising demand for fitness and biosensor devices, ever-conscious health aware users, and business requirements is contributing towards the growth of the smartwatch industry in India and the rest of the world.
• Developed countries with higher spending potential are ahead of developing countries when it comes to embracing cutting-edge technology. But with smartphones and smart watches, I guess the trends are more or less similar across the globe.

In short, it is a future-proof eCommerce business idea to start an online store for selling smart watches. An alternative eCommerce business idea could be to start an affiliate store for selling smart watches.

By the way, do check our blog on unique business ideas for 2024.

Can you manufacture smartwatches in India to sell on your own eCommerce store?

Selling a smart watches online is undoubtedly one of the best eCommerce business ideas. But you can also consider starting your own smart watch manufacturing business in India in 2024. More precisely, assembly business.

Of-course, starting your own manufacturing/assembly business would demand 10s of crores in investment. And you would need to hire engineering specialists as well. 

But it is not like it’s impossible. If you put your heart at it, anything is possible. 

Last line reminds me of a scene from the 3 Idiots movie. If you could recall, in a scene BABA RANCHHODDAS (Amir Khan) says – “all is well, anything is possible”. And then, RAJU (Sharman Joshi) pours out all the toothpaste from the tube. And he asks him to put it back if “anything is possible”.

That’s a fun movie. By any chance, if you have not watched it, you must.

Cool. If manufacturing interests you, read some great manufacturing business ideas.

Earlier we spoke of affiliate stores. Affiliate stores are itself a niche eCommerce business idea. Many are not aware about it. Yes, even in 2024 many don’t know what an online affiliate business is. So, I thought, let’s detail out a little on that too.

Next, we shall discuss about affiliate stores – a gem among eCommerce business ideas!

3. Affiliate eCommerce store business ideas

Affiliate store

Start an affiliate eCommerce store. It’s one of the best low investment eCommerce business ideas.

An affiliate eCommerce store is equivalent to an offline salesperson. More apt explanation could be a sales guy who is not officially associated with a company, but sells its products. This is one of the best eCommerce business ideas for entrepreneurs on a hunt for low-investment business ideas.

What’s an affiliate store eCommerce business?

Let’s understand with a example – Let’s say Zara sells apparels through its e-commerce website. Now, Zara wants to boost its sales. But it doesn’t have the revenue to open up new stores or pay new salesperson. What can it do to still boost its sales? There are two options – 

• Zara can franchise its brand and products. The risk here is that now the brand experience goes into someone else’s hands. Technically, the franchise name will still belong to the parent company/brand. But still, how the customer experiences the brand is dependent on the people running the franchise store.
• The second option is Zara lets other sales people retail its products. That basically means, Zara asks its partners to sell its products. And in return, Zara shares a pie of revenue generated or lets say profits booked. 

Simple. Right? 

This is what’s exactly called an affiliate business. 

How to get started with affiliate eCommerce business ideas?

To start with this eCommerce business ideas, you can register with brands that are looking for affiliate salespeople. And help these brands clock in more sales. The more you sell their product, the more you are paid. Usually, the revenue sharing model with the affiliate partner is on flat rate basis. Flat rate? Yes, in flat rate affiliate system, you’ll have a fixed income per sale. Alternatively, commission rate is based on slabs i.e., you’ll earn more per sale if you make more sales. 

For example, $10/sale for 1-5 sales per month, and $15/sale for 5-10 sales per month. I hope you understood the slab model.

Cool. To understand thoroughly about how affiliate business works and how you can become a rockstar affiliate partner read books on affiliate marketing or watch free videos on Youtube.

For technical setup of your affiliate store, reach out to me or a small scale IT services company.

The next eCommerce business idea is very close to my heart.

Find best marketing business ideas 2024.

4. Grocery & food delivery eCommerce business ideas

Grocery & Food Delivery

Start a grocery & food delivery startup. It’s one of the very profitable eCommerce business ideas in 2024.

Huh! Food delivery. 

Gosh. Zomato. Swiggy. Bigbasket. Grofers. TinyOwl. FoodPanda. Box8. Dabbawala. 

Those are the first few names that come to my mind when I think of food delivery.

• In-fact, Zomato turned out to be a business worth more than 1 Lakh crores.
• Investor sentiments took zomato shares close to 200% of IPO price.
• Starting an eCommerce food delivery startup is a good idea in 2024.
• But I would suggest going niche. The capital required to start this food delivery business will totally be dependent on the scale at which you want to implement this.

Grocery delivery eCommerce business ideas continued…

Let’s say you want to deliver apples online or just fruits. Then first start with a city and one by one conquer other cities. Holy S#!@. As I was writing the last line, it reminded me of how the Taliban has taken over the Afghanistan region by force, threatening human lives and their freedom.

The situation is really scary out there. My prayers are with Afghan people. It’s also an example of “if you do not want to help yourself, no one can”. But I am not here to judge. Afghans would have definitely fought the bad forces. I’ll be a fool to believe what media cohorts promote. We never know their propaganda. Global media is apparently sold-out to industrialists and politicians.

Any competitors in this eCommerce business segment?

Anyways, this grocery delivery eCommerce business idea is really cool.

• Even JioMart and Dmart are competing here, not to mention flipkart and bigbasket.
• With these big players in the game, it might sound really challenging to start something of your own.
• But at the base, if you innovate and shape your idea with a sustainable business plan – you can always survive and thrive.
• The catch is the only way to test out whether a plan is effective and fail proof is to try and be vulnerable.

Having said that, read more about starting your online grocery store, again I would suggest books or youtube videos.

You would enjoy our collection of food business ideas.

5. Fashion jewelry eCommerce business ideas for 2024

Online Jewelry Store

Jewelry fashion is an evergreen business. Necklaces, watches, ear rings, finger rings, bracelets, payals, nose rings, and recently belly rings – all these are in trend all throughout the year. First of all, people have immense trust in Gold, Silver, and Diamond, and then it also gives a royal look to those who wear it. But is it a good product for selling or online stores? Is there a market for jewelry based eCommerce business ideas?

The Jewellery market in India is a INR 6180 Billion market. 

But still the question is do people buy jewelry online? 

I mean, jewelry is a high-value transaction, especially during a marriage session. As per Oberlo, the online jewelry market is $8Bn+ in the USA. So, it is established that people do buy jewelry online. That’s a good enough number to motivate you for starting your online jewelry store. 

Online jewelry selling eCommerce business ideas

If I was considering stepping into the jewelry market, this was a green signal for me. 

The next question is, who should venture into the online jewelry eCommerce business ideas? Well, I would only recommend people who are into offline jewelry retailing to take a shot on the online model. The risks are pretty minimised. If you can’t sell it online. Sell offline 😉 Just kidding. If you have the knowledge then you can start a jewelry business. 

• The main thing in jewelry is the originality, quality, and craft of the jewelry.
• The quality should be really good, and the finishing touch, be it cutting or polishing, should be premium in quality.
• If you get these two things correct, it’s pretty much sorted out.

All that you need to get right after these two critically important aspects is marketing your jewelry ecommerce site to the right audience and deliver them a premium buying experience. For delivering premium buying experiences – you need to serve them an aesthetic jewelry website with intuitive no-nonsense navigation.

Investment & growth of such innovative businesses

If you’re not already into the jewelry offline business, then initial investments would range somewhere between 30-50 Lakhs for starting a gold or diamond jewelry store. And 4-6 lakhs for starting an artificial jewelry store.

Talking of fashion statements – let’s discuss one of the wildly popular eCommerce business ideas, the most popular segment in the online shopping space, and where you can excel even if there are 1000s of competitors.

Guess, guess. 

Uhmm….C’mon. 

I want my readers to be really good at predicting things.

Because good entrepreneurs predict things right, they analyse things in the right way. They are visionary.

The more you use your brain to think, the more it sharpens up.

The sharper your brain is, the better decisions you make.

The better decisions you take, the more your business grows.

Anyways, I do share productivity related tips that I found in books. You can follow me on Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter to stay updated. Or, I keep sharing them randomly within blogs.

Coming back to eCommerce business ideas, some of you might have guessed it right. I was suggesting to start a fashion and apparel focused eCommerce store in India in 2024. Lately, I’ve been hearing about Snapdeal bouncing back and on the verge of launching an IPO in the first half of 2024.

6. Niche fashion & textiles eCommerce business ideas 

Niche fashion store

You can start an online clothing store digitally. It’s not easy but simple if done with precautionary care and proper research. But I am not asking you to start just any fashion / clothing store. I’m proposing to start in a niche segment. For example, every location has a uniqueness and a history of its craft associated with it. 

Let’s say – Banarasi saree, or Madhubani print. You might not have ever visited Banaras, or Madhubani but chances are you would have heard about these. There is demand for these in the local and export market too. Banarasi saree industry saw a big upsurge when Anushka wore it during her marriage reception.

• So, I am not asking you to start just another T-shirt store or saree store but bring some uniqueness to your store and differentiate it from the crowd.
• This would help you to stay focused, compete better and properly market your business.   

Explore top innovative business ideas, and startup business ideas.

7. Sports equipment eCommerce store business ideas

sports equipment store

• Start a sports equipment selling eCommerce store.
• You’ll be competing with the likes of decathlon, and khelmart.
• Online sports stores and marketplaces are finally seeing the growth that they have been waiting for a long time.
• The market is presently being dominated by decathlon but khelmart too gets 1 lakh and 30 thousands visitors on their eCommerce website every month. I presently don’t have any data around how much they sell per month, but am pretty sure they would be doing good business with that kind of traffic.

You too can start selling sports shoes, bags, apparels online by starting a sports products selling ecommerce store. This is the least competitive ecommerce business idea I guess. But as it is a niche idea, so can’t make any predictions on how soon you can start reaping the profits after investment. Initial investments for starting a sports ecommerce store would be around 15-20 Lakhs if you start with only a few product varieties and sports verticals. Let’s say, you only sell footballs, and badminton related products. The more verticals and product varieties/brands you explore – the more investment you’ll have to make.

Challenge with these sort of eCommerce business ideas

Overall, the idea looks promising to me. Only downside is, people are still not used to buying expensive sports goods online. Yes, they can buy a TV worth a lakh online but they refrain from buying a sports gadget worth 40k online. Because forging is very common in sports goods, so people are still preferably buying offline or via trustworthy sources.

In short, if you start a sports products eCommerce business, you’ll have to invest heavily on branding and winning consumer trust. Basically, pro-level advertisement and a big celebrity endorsement.

Okay, having discussed seven very socially acceptable businesses. Let’s discuss an idea that might give you a feeling of smuggler, bad-boy, and criminal.

Again, I’m gonna request you to make a wild guess. I have already dropped hints, it’s up to you if you sulk the hints or use it. I think only a few of you would have got this right. You can’t start this business in Bihar and Gujrat as it is banned in both the places. Now, many of you would have guessed it right.

Yes, a wine delivery eCommerce store. Exciting idea for young people.

By the way, you don’t want to miss out on 277+ opportunities that we shared in a mega list of Business ideas.

8. Online wine store & delivery eCommerce business ideas

online wine store

Start an online wine booking eCommerce store. I can see your eyes going bright, and lips getting drenched with alcohol by reading this idea 😀

Do I need to expand on this idea? It’s pretty obvious right. 

Probably this is one of those eCommerce business ideas on the list which would need you to go through a lot of licensing and paperwork. Other than money power, you also need network and muscle power in this business. 

In countries like Australia, USA, and UK – online wine and brewery product retailing related eCommerce business ideas are legal and pretty much a norm. There are grocery sites that retail wine too. Yes. Wine is not a fuss in Australia. It’s a common drink there.

Is wine permitted to be sold online via eCommerce websites?

It’s not illegal to start an online wine ecommerce store in India. It’s just that – paperwork and license work makes it a tough mountain to hike. But that’s where opportunity lies. Because it is tough, only a few people attempt this ecommerce business idea. If you get it right, you can easily become a leading player.

Naturebasket, Winepark, Drizly, Saucey are some of the leading ecommerce wine players at the moment in India and abroad. Saucey and drizly are global players in the wine ecommerce retailing business.

Cool. That was an interesting read on eCommerce business ideas for 2024 in India. Quite a diverse list. Hope you found something interesting.

I’ll take up this opportunity to recommend you reading village based business ideas.

That’s not all…. more eCommerce business ideas!

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We have shared 8 high profit ecommerce business ideas where you won’t find much competition right now. But there can be several other ecommerce business ideas that you may consider to launch your online business – like you can start 

• a phone-selling eCommerce store, or 
• an eCommerce store for home appliances, or 
• an online premium furniture retail store, 

and endless more. 

See you again… 

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