Oldest E-commerce Company in India: How It All Began

Look around today—ordering anything online in India is almost boringly simple. But before all the delivery bikes and sale banners, someone had to put up that very first shopping cart. Most folks think of Flipkart or Amazon when they picture the start of e-commerce here. Actually, the trailblazer was Fabmart, way back in 1999.

Fabmart was selling music CDs online when most people struggled to get the internet up and running. High-speed internet? Nope. Cash on delivery? Not even a concept back then. Yet, these founders took a crazy leap, asking Indians to buy things online with their credit cards.

Knowing which company really started things matters. Spotting early movers tells you who took real risks and changed the game for everyone. If someone asks about the oldest e-commerce company in India, now you have a real answer—the ones who went live when dial-up tones were still music to the ears.

• Tracing The First Click: India’s True Pioneer
• The Rise of Fabmart: Years Before Flipkart
• What Made Early Indian E-commerce Tick?
• Challenges of Going Online in the 1990s
• From Books to Everything: How The Scene Exploded
• Lessons from the First Movers

Tracing The First Click: India’s True Pioneer

If you think Flipkart defined Indian e-commerce, you’re off by almost a decade. The real pioneer was Fabmart, launched in 1999, when internet speeds crawled slower than traffic on a Delhi Monday morning. The brand was started by K Vaitheeswaran—often called the ‘father of Indian e-commerce’—along with Sundeep Thakran and a few others, way before Amazon or Myntra ever showed up.

Back then, online retail was unheard of. Fabmart kicked off with music CDs, since they were easy to ship and didn’t need complicated storage, but quickly expanded into books, movies, groceries, and even toys. It was the first Indian website where you could actually pay with your credit card and have something delivered to your door.

To put things in perspective, here are a few numbers and milestones from that first era:

What’s wild is that the average Indian only started using the internet in big numbers much later (around 2005-2008), but Fabmart was already handling online payments and customer support way before it was cool. These guys faced hurdles—few people had cards, delivery networks were patchy, and trust was a major issue. But they pushed through and kind of wrote the unofficial “how-to” on online selling in India.

If you’re digging into Indian e-commerce history, Fabmart is the name you want to drop. They were the ones taking orders when the rest of the country was still figuring out how to sign up for an email account.

The Rise of Fabmart: Years Before Flipkart

Back in 1999, Indian internet users were just figuring out how to log in, let alone shop online. That’s when Fabmart stepped in as India’s first big player in online shopping. A lot of people think Flipkart or Amazon kicked off the e-commerce story, but Fabmart had already opened its virtual doors years before those names popped up. This makes Fabmart the oldest e-commerce India platform that really tried to make online shopping a thing here.

Fabmart’s founders included K. Vaitheeswaran (often called the “Father of E-commerce in India”) along with legends like V. S. Sudhakar and Sundeep Thakran. Their first online store was focused on music CDs, books, and later, groceries. It might sound basic now, but shopping for a CD online in 1999 was a huge deal. Even today, that boldness is hard to ignore. Fabmart actually listened to what early internet users wanted, even if those numbers were small compared to now.

They were one of the first to offer online payment options, working with Indian banks to accept credit cards when hardly anyone had one. But here’s a cool fact—they even launched their own physical store in Bangalore to help skeptical buyers feel more comfortable with the brand. Today, we take omnichannel retail for granted, but they were already trying it out before most had heard the term.

Seeing retailers like Flipkart boom in the late 2000s, it’s easy to forget the wild-west days when e-commerce was a gamble. Fabmart proved that you could actually convince Indian shoppers to buy something online. Their bold experiments laid out the basic blueprint that others followed, from category expansion to building trust and tackling payments. Anyone serious about learning the real story of e-commerce in India should dig into Fabmart’s playbook.

What Made Early Indian E-commerce Tick?

So, what actually kept those first online shops going in India, especially when most people barely trusted the internet? It was all about a handful of key moves and gutsy experiments. Fabmart and its early crew figured out pretty fast that local reality was way different from what Amazon or eBay faced abroad. They had to get creative on everything—from product choices to payments and delivery.

• Limited internet, targeted products: Back in 1999-2001, only about 6-7 million Indians even had internet access, and many were just checking emails. Fabmart didn’t try to sell groceries or clothes; they picked music CDs, books, and toys, stuff die-hard fans couldn’t find easily in regular stores.
• Online payments workarounds: Most people didn’t have credit cards or felt safe using them online. Early e-commerce startups had to set up phone orders and even let people drop cash at physical partner shops. That’s hustle.
• Trust-building: You wouldn’t just hand over your card details to a random website in 2000, right? Fabmart put up their office landline number, showed founder faces, and sometimes even called new buyers to reassure them it wasn’t a scam.
• Shipping solutions: India Post wasn’t built for e-commerce. These guys made deals with courier services and sometimes personally handled deliveries in big cities. For small towns, they used creative packaging to reduce theft or loss.

Just to get a sense of the early landscape, here’s a quick look:

The whole scene was driven by a small but hungry group of shoppers—tech workers, overseas students, music geeks—who wanted things regular shops didn’t have. Knowing your actual customer, and finding reliable ways to get them their stuff, was what made early Indian e-commerce tick. They solved problems as they popped up, and in the end, that’s what set the foundation for sites like Flipkart and Amazon to explode later.

Challenges of Going Online in the 1990s

Opening an oldest e-commerce India site in the late 90s was a bit like trying to run a marathon with your shoelaces tied together. For a start, the internet connection was slow and expensive. Most people used dial-up at speeds that struggled to load a single image, let alone a shopping cart full of products.

Credit cards were not a common thing for most Indians then. Only a small group of city dwellers had them, and convincing people to pay online was a tall order, thanks to massive trust issues. Tons of shoppers were suspicious about putting card numbers on a website, and some even believed online payments could easily empty out their bank accounts.

Then there was the matter of actually getting stuff delivered across India. Reliable courier services didn’t reach every pin code, and there were plenty of stories about orders lost somewhere between warehouse and doorstep. On top of that, there was no “cash on delivery”—a feature everyone takes for granted now.

• Power cuts and flaky connections meant websites would freeze or crash mid-order.
• Most people accessed the web from shared cybercafés, with almost no privacy or security.
• Even getting your website listed on directories was tricky—no easy search engines like today.
• Marketing was mostly word of mouth, since internet ads were almost unheard of for local businesses.

Here’s a quick look at some 1999 numbers that put things into perspective:

Imagine launching a website knowing only a tiny fraction of people could even access it. That’s the level of guts—and frustration—early e-commerce teams had to deal with. If Fabmart and its few competitors managed to grow, it’s only because they handled problems that would have scared off most folks today.

From Books to Everything: How The Scene Exploded

Fabmart got things rolling with music CDs and books because those were small, easy to ship, and didn’t break the bank. Sound familiar? That’s pretty much the same way Amazon started out in the US. It let people dip their toes into online shopping without a big risk—try buying a book online, wait a bit, and boom: home delivery.

But Indians didn’t just want books for long. Within a couple of years, Fabmart was selling groceries, movies, and electronics. This wasn’t just copying Western playbooks. For a lot of people, finding music cassettes or imported electronics locally was a pain, so a website that could get you those things had real appeal. Flipkart, which launched in 2007, bet even bigger on books, but quickly shifted to electronics and everything imaginable, which is when things really caught fire.

Here’s some quick data to show just how fast things changed:

This ‘category explosion’ didn’t just happen because sellers wanted it. Consumers made it clear: if you can bring it to my doorstep for a decent price, I’ll try it. And once cash-on-delivery started picking up around 2010, folks who never trusted online payments jumped in. Within a few years, the oldest e-commerce company in India had gone from barely surviving to inspiring a mad rush of startups, investors, and yes—Legendary sales days like the Big Billion Days.

Here’s a simple rule you can use if you want to spot the next big Indian e-commerce history moment: watch where new categories pop up. Back in the early 2010s, it was baby diapers and smartphones. Today, groceries and medicines are the hot battlegrounds. If you see a shopping website start selling something no one else does, keep an eye on it. That’s how these wild explosions always begin.

Lessons from the First Movers

The early Indian e-commerce companies like Fabmart didn’t just try to sell products—they had to give people a reason to trust online shopping. Back in 1999, nobody was ready to punch in their credit card details or wait days for a courier. These pioneers had to deal with questions most of us don’t think about now, like, “Will my money just disappear?” or “What if I never get my order?”

One key move: Fabmart invested heavily in customer support. They set up helplines and responded to emails quickly, building trust, one nervous customer at a time. They also partnered with secure payment gateways at a time when online fraud was a nightmare and used major banks for all transactions. Their website showed actual stock levels—sounds normal now, but this was a big deal back then.

The challenges were huge—India’s internet users in 2000 were less than 1% of the population. Logistics? They had to set up their own supply chains since there were barely any courier services willing to handle e-commerce volume.

So, what can today’s sellers learn from the oldest e-commerce India platform? Here’s what actually worked for them:

• Earn trust, don’t just assume it. Early players had to fight for every customer. Even now, reviews, transparent policies, and sharp support matter more than catchy ads.
• Tech matters, but people matter more. Fabmart’s customer care and attention to user feedback were just as crucial as their website code.
• Be ready to do the grunt work. Setting up warehouses, chasing slow deliveries, and solving tiny problems quickly made a difference when nothing was standard.

The main takeaway? Building something new in e-commerce isn’t just about being first or having the flashiest app. It’s about getting the basics right, staying patient, and making things work even when the bigger ecosystem isn’t ready.