What are the legal requirements for starting online ecommerce business

168 votes

A lot will depend upon the industry you are looking to start your business in. To begin with, if you have a co-founder, always advisable to have a Founders Agreement in place. Register your key trademarks. Have exhaustive terms and conditions of use on your website and app. Evaluate compliance with different labour laws if you will be hiring multiple employees. Get standard NDAs and employment contracts in place. Have a privacy policy on the website, especially if you plan to integrate any payment gateway. If you have engaged an outside company for developing software, execute a Services Agreement with them to ensure you own all corresponding intellectual property.
U would be required to get the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Drafted. Also, there are several compliances such as appointing a grievance officer for addressing the complaints of customers. Also, the compliances would depend on what u want to sell on your website.

LawRato LawRato

607 votes

First you need to decide whether you shall be running the business as Proprietorship or you shall be forming any legal entity for running the business. E-commerce can be either Inventory based or B2B. In case you are an inventory based model you definitely need to take permission from the manufacturers. But if you are B2B model, other sellers registered in your platform needs to take permission for selling the products.

Advocate Abheek Saha LawRato