6 Statistics on Indian D2C (2026)

1. Nearly half of India’s D2C brands are outside the big metros

Of the D2C stores with a known city, 45.4% are based outside the eight big metro regions: Delhi NCR, Mumbai MMR, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. 54.6% are headquartered inside them.

Top metro areas by Indian D2C brands

Live D2C stores in our database are spread across 4,568 Indian cities and towns, and some of the country’s best-known D2C names come from outside the metros. Here are a handful of examples:

2. Shopify and WooCommerce run 9 in 10 Indian D2C stores

Shopify powers 48.4% of live D2C stores and WooCommerce 42.4% (90.8% between them). Custom-built stores are third most-popular, accounting for 4.6%. Everything else (Wix, Magento, OpenCart, Dukaan and others) the remaining sliver.

Shopify’s dominance is even clearer at the top of the Indian D2C market. Among the most-searched D2C brand names, Shopify powers 78 of the top 100.

3. There are over 125,000 live single-brand D2C stores in India

Merchant Data tracks a growing number of single-brand D2C stores in India. 125,347 at the time this article was last updated. If you add multi-brand retailers (those who sell not only their own products, but multiple brands), the picture gets bigger. 14,781 multi-brand retailers take the live total to 140,128. This article uses the narrower single-brand number throughout.

Methodology note: for every brand in our database, we regularly check to confirm that the site is live. Secondly, we classify each website so that marketplaces, B2B/wholesale websites, content sites and others are excluded from the numbers.

4. More than 26% of D2C stores advertise cash on delivery

26.1% of D2C stores advertise COD on their site: 21.0% without conditions and 5.1% with conditions (e.g. minimum order, fee, or pincode limits). Only 1.7% say outright that they do not offer COD.

The true share of stores offering COD is likely higher than 26%, because some stores don’t actively mention it on their website until the final checkout stages.

For more details, such as the breakdown of COD conditions, COD split by regions, take a look at: The State of Cash on Delivery in Indian D2C (2026)

5. .com is more popular than .in among Indian D2C website URLs

57.5% of Indian D2C stores use a .com domain, against 38.2% on .in or .co.in (34.4% .in, 3.8% .co.in). The remaining 4.3% use everything else: .store and .shop (1.9%), .co (0.7%) and a long tail.

Some of the biggest names in Indian D2C sit on each side:

And a few of the very biggest skip both: Wakefit, GIVA and Minimalist all run on .co.

6. Delhi is India’s D2C capital, and Jaipur punches above its weight

Delhi leads with 13,415 D2C stores (10.7%), ahead of Mumbai (9,485 / 7.6%) and Bengaluru (7,124 / 5.7%). Count Gurugram, Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad with Delhi and the NCR alone is home to 1 in 6 Indian D2C brands (17.5%).

The city punching above its weight is Jaipur: 4th in the country with 3,886 brands (3.1%), ahead of Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. Surat (3,492 / 2.8%) sits 6th, ahead of Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.

Top cities by number of Indian D2C brands

% of total is the share of all live single-brand D2C stores, including those with no known city.