Agencies
As India’s small businesses increasingly sell through Instagram, WhatsApp, marketplaces and their own websites, one challenge continues to grow alongside them: they don’t actually own much of the infrastructure powering those sales.That’s the problem Hostinger is looking to address with its newly launched ecommerce platform.Designed for small businesses, the platform brings inventory management, payments, shipping, customer data and order tracking into a single dashboard, allowing merchants to manage sales across multiple channels without relying entirely on any one platform.The move also places Hostinger in a growing market for commerce and business management software. Companies such as Odoo, Salesforce, Shopify, Zoho Commerce and Wix already offer tools that help businesses build online stores, manage customers and streamline operations. Hostinger’s pitch is that it combines many of these capabilities into a simpler, AI-assisted platform aimed at smaller businesses that may not have dedicated technical teams.The launch comes as online commerce continues to evolve beyond traditional websites. Businesses today are expected to sell wherever customers are, whether that’s on social media, messaging apps or marketplaces. At the same time, the rise of agentic AI is expected to further change how people discover and buy products, making flexible commerce infrastructure increasingly important.One of the platform’s more notable features is Quick Links. Instead of building a full website, merchants can upload product photos and use AI to automatically generate product pages complete with descriptions, pricing suggestions and checkout functionality. The generated product link can then be shared across platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram while allowing businesses to retain ownership of customer data and orders.The platform also includes Kodee, Hostinger’s AI assistant, which helps merchants set up and manage their online stores through conversational prompts. It can assist with onboarding, product listings, SEO improvements and promotional campaigns, reducing some of the complexity involved in running an online business.Hostinger is also positioning itself aggressively on pricing. The company says it won’t charge transaction fees on ecommerce sales in India, with plans starting at ₹249 per month.The launch reflects the company’s growing focus on India, which recently became Hostinger’s largest market globally after crossing 1 million customers. India now accounts for nearly 20% of Hostinger’s global customer base of more than 5 million users, supported by infrastructure including its Mumbai data centre.The announcement comes just weeks after The Economic Times visited Hostinger’s headquarters in Vilnius, Lithuania, where the publication explored the company’s AI roadmap, infrastructure investments and growing focus on the Indian market. You can read that report here.The broader trend is becoming increasingly clear. Ecommerce platforms are no longer competing solely on website builders or hosting services. Instead, they’re evolving into end-to-end commerce operating systems that combine storefronts, payments, inventory, logistics and AI into a single platform. As businesses increasingly sell across multiple channels, the competition is shifting from simply helping merchants get online to helping them own and manage their entire commerce infrastructure. Hostinger’s latest launch is another example of that transition.
ecommerce platformsmall businesses in Indiainventory managementHostingerQuick Links featureKodee AI assistant
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ecommerce platformsmall businesses in Indiainventory managementHostingerQuick Links featureKodee AI assistant
(Catch all the Business News, Breaking News, and Latest News Updates on The Economic Times.)
Subscribe to The Economic Times Prime and read the ET ePaper online.
…more
