Shopify comes to India; sell goods or services online for Rs. 750 per month

Shopify, a popular e-commerce platform that anyone can use to create and power online stores, has announced its entry into the e-commerce market space in India in partnership with SingTel, by launching Shopify.in.

Shopify is popular around the world as a platform that lets individuals and small to medium-sized merchants run their own stores without having the technical know-how to develop or maintain a website. Shopify provides users with the tools to have their shops online quickly and accept secure credit card payments for goods and services. Shopify is operating in over 100 countries and powers over 50,000 online stores with annual sales exceeding 1.5 billion dollars.

Merchants can customise their storefronts, keep track of orders and manage customer data via a web browser. The platform provides features such as hosting, templates, a web dashboard to manage products and orders, a secure shopping cart, SEO tools, customer service support, mobile optimised stores, and an iOS app which offers merchants the convenience of managing their business on-the-go.

Customers also receive the ability to run referral programs, email marketing campaigns and free advertising credits on Facebook and Google. In India, Spotify-powered merchants can choose to accept payments over PayPal, DirecPay and PayU. PayU accepts Visa/ MasterCard Credit Card and debit cards from more than 50 banks.

"We're really excited to announce this partnership with SingTel," said Harley Finkelstein, Shopify's Chief Platform Officer. "We built Shopify to allow anyone with a product or a service to easily create beautiful and highly scalable online stores, at an affordable price. SingTel is the ideal partner for us, as we're both focused on helping small businesses succeed in today's global economy. Together, we can help millions of small businesses and individuals build profitable online shops."

Loo Cheng Chuan, SingTel Group Digital Life's Head of LocalL!fe, said: "SingTel is excited by the tremendous growth opportunities in the eCommerce market. By 2015, 35% of internet users in the Asia Pacific region will make purchases online, and 30% of these transactions will be performed on a mobile device."

Shopify.in plans start at Rs. 750 per month, for which merchants get the ability to sell a maximum of 25 products, 1GB file storage and are charged 2 percent transaction fee, and go up to Rs. 9,560 per month, which will get you unlimited products, storage, no transaction fees, discount code engine and more. All plans include the ability to run stores on your own domain and unlimited bandwidth.