Start your online store with AI.

Yes. Tell HOD-AI — the assistant on this page — what you sell. It suggests designs made for your kind of business, checks your store name, verifies your email with a one-time code and creates the store on your own web address in a few minutes. You then add products (or ask HOD-AI to), and you can change anything it set up.

On every plan you ask in Hindi or English and HOD-AI prepares the work: add or edit products, create discount codes, build pages, change your theme, book shipments for paid orders, send invoices and set up abandoned-cart reminders. It also answers questions like "how much did I sell today" from your live data. Nothing changes until you tap Approve. Every store gets free AI answers each day; Store + AI (₹499/month) adds 200 AI credits a month for heavier use.

You can open your shop without one — we never ask for a GSTIN at signup, which is where the big marketplaces stop you. Whether you need GST to sell depends on your turnover (generally ₹40 lakh for goods, ₹20 lakh for services, lower in special-category states) and on whether you ship between states, which is a common trigger for compulsory registration. Those are the general rules and not tax advice; check your own case before you rely on them. When you do register, add your GSTIN in settings and every invoice becomes a proper GST invoice automatically.

Yes, and it is one of the most common things people open a shop here for. Custom sizes, colours and personalised text are handled as product options, you can take part-payment up front so a made-to-order item is not a loss if the customer disappears, and stock tracking can be switched off entirely for items you make on demand.

There are four plans. The Store plan is ₹299/month or ₹2,499/year and starts with three months free, no card. Store + AI — the same store plus HOD-AI and 200 AI credits a month — is ₹499/month or ₹4,999/year, paid from day one. There is no commission on your sales, no per-order fee and no setup charge. The one other cost is your payment gateway's own cut on prepaid orders, which goes to Razorpay, PayU or Cashfree — not to us. Cash on Delivery costs you nothing but the courier charge.

Because right now every sale costs you a conversation. Someone asks the price, you reply, they ask about delivery, you reply, and you do that again for the next person. A shop answers all of that without you, takes the money at eleven at night, and — the part that matters most — leaves you with a customer list you own. An Instagram account can be lost overnight; the people who bought from your shop are yours.

Not from the shop alone, and anyone promising otherwise is selling you something. A new shop with no traffic sells nothing. What changes is that the audience you already have — your WhatsApp contacts, your followers, the people who walk past your counter — finally has somewhere to buy. If you want new customers on top of that, Meta Ads start at ₹699 and send enquiries straight to your WhatsApp.

Price and fit. Shopify bills in dollars, adds transaction fees unless you use Shopify Payments (which is not available the same way in India), and most Indian apps you need are paid extras. Dukaan has moved towards larger brands. HOD Media is built for a small Indian shop: UPI, cards and Cash on Delivery out of the box, GST invoicing, Hindi, English and Gujarati support from real people, and 0% commission at ₹299/month.

Yes. Products, variants, images and stock come across from a Shopify CSV or a plain spreadsheet, and you can point your existing domain at the new shop when you are ready, so customers never see a gap. If your catalogue is large or messy, send it to us on WhatsApp and we will do the import for you.

You pay ₹299/month (or ₹2,499/year) to keep the store, and the price you signed up at stays locked for as long as you keep the subscription. You can add HOD-AI at any time from Billing. There is no contract and no exit fee. If you stop, your shop goes offline but your data stays exportable, so you leave with your products and your customer list.

A phone is enough. Adding products, editing prices, accepting orders and printing invoices all work from the browser on a phone, which is how most of our merchants actually run their shop. A laptop is easier for a big first import, but nothing requires one.

It goes offline — customers see a closed sign rather than a broken page — and your data stays exportable, so you leave with your products, your orders and your customer list. Nothing is deleted the moment a payment fails, and there is no exit fee.

Both. You start on a free yourname.hodmedia.in address that works immediately, and you can point your own domain at the shop whenever you are ready — SSL is included and set up for you. If you already have a domain pointed somewhere else, you can move it across without your customers seeing a gap.

HOD-AI answers product questions instantly, any time. When you need a person, you get one — in Hindi, English or Gujarati, on WhatsApp or through a ticket. We are a small team in Gujarat, not a call centre, so people answer during working hours rather than instantly at 3am.