Shop from India: the online stores worth knowing from abroad

The short version

Shopping from India is easy; shipping out of it is the part that stops people. Indian e-commerce is built for Indian addresses. A handful of stores run an international arm, usually with a thin catalogue and a heavy delivery charge; the rest simply will not accept a foreign address at checkout. A free Indian address removes the problem in one move — you shop every site below as a domestic customer, and we forward what arrives.

The big marketplaces

Three names carry almost all of this: Amazon India, Flipkart and Myntra. If you only ever learn three Indian online shopping sites, learn those.

Amazon India (amazon.in) is the widest catalogue in the country and the usual starting point. Flipkart is its closest rival and often cheaper on electronics and festival-season deals. Meesho is where small sellers and unbranded fashion live, at prices nothing else matches, and Shopsy, Flipkart's budget store, sits alongside it. Snapdeal, JioMart and Tata CLiQ round out the general stores; Tata CLiQ Luxury is the one to know for premium brands. Shoppers Stop is the department store most people know by name, for clothing, beauty and home.

Fashion and beauty

Myntra and Ajio are the two that matter for clothing, and between them they carry most Indian and international labels sold in India. Nykaa owns beauty, with a fashion arm alongside it, and Purplle is the other major beauty marketplace — strong on mass-market makeup and skincare and on its own labels, and the one people ask for by name when Nykaa is out of stock. Tira is the newer beauty store worth adding to that list. Beyond the stores, people abroad search for Indian brands by name: Forest Essentials and Kama Ayurveda for ayurvedic skincare, Dot & Key, Mamaearth, WishCare and Lakmé, and Kay Beauty and SUGAR for makeup. Perfume, nail polish and aerosols cannot be shipped whatever the shop sells you; serums, oils, creams and make-up can, so read the prohibited-items page for your country before you fill a basket. Biba, W for Woman, Fabindia and Manyavar are the ethnic-wear names people abroad ask for by name, particularly ahead of a wedding; House of Indya and Koskii are newer names in the same searches.

Below the big names sit the labels that people search for individually once they know them. Libas, Soch, Global Desi and Westside for everyday kurtas and kurtis; Peachmode and Craftsvilla for sarees and suits at high-street prices; Jaypore and Bunaai for handloom and slower-made pieces; Suta, which people buy for the blouses as much as the sarees; Tasva and Manyavar for menswear; and Max for basics. Bewakoof is worth knowing for graphic tees and casualwear rather than ethnic. Juttis are their own small category — JuttiChoo and the marketplace sellers — and they pack flat, which makes them one of the better things to add to a box you are already sending.

Home, kids and everything else

FirstCry and Hopscotch for babies and children, Pepperfry and Urban Ladder for furnishings and decor, Decathlon India for sports kit at Indian prices, Croma and Reliance Digital for electronics (mobile phones and laptops cannot be shipped) and Lenskart for eyewear. Isha Life for ayurvedic and devotional items, subject to the same import rules as anything else medicinal.

Indian kitchen appliances — Premier wet grinders and mixers are the classic request — run on 230V, which suits Europe, the UK, the Gulf and Australia with an adapter and does not suit North America at all. A grinder bought for a kitchen in New Jersey needs a transformer. Car parts from boodmo and similar are fine as objects but fit Indian-market vehicles, so check the part number against your own car rather than the model name.

The Kerala names

This is the part the national forwarding services tend to miss. Kalyan Silks, Seematti, Jayalakshmi Silks and Parthas for kasavu, wedding sarees and set mundu. DC Books, Mathrubhumi Books and Current Books for Malayalam titles that exist nowhere else. Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala and Kerala Ayurveda for authentic ayurvedic preparations, subject to your country’s rules on what may be imported.

And the ones with no website at all

Plenty of what people abroad actually want is sold by a boutique in Thrissur or a tailor on Instagram who takes orders by WhatsApp and ships within India only. Your Indian address works for them exactly as it works for Amazon — they post to us, and we forward it on.

How to use any of them

Sign up free, take your Indian address and suite code, and enter it as the delivery address at checkout. We photograph each parcel as it arrives, hold it free for 30 days, and combine everything into one box when you ask us to ship — so ten orders from ten stores cost you one international rate rather than ten.