How do you get a GST number for online selling in India?
You apply yourself, online, at the official GST portal — gst.gov.in — using Form GST REG-01. Go to Services → Registration → New Registration. Part A asks for your legal name as it appears on your PAN, the PAN itself, a mobile number, an email address, your state and your type of business. After OTP verification of the mobile and email, the portal issues a Temporary Reference Number (TRN). You log back in with the TRN and complete Part B: business details, principal place of business with address proof, bank account details, the goods or services you deal in, and details of promoters or partners. You submit with Aadhaar-based OTP authentication, a Digital Signature Certificate (DSC), or EVC, and receive an Application Reference Number (ARN) to track status until the GSTIN is issued. There is no government fee for GST registration.
Whether you actually need a GSTIN before you start selling depends on where you sell. If you sell goods through a marketplace — an e-commerce operator that collects payment and deducts Tax Collected at Source (TCS) on your behalf — registration is generally required regardless of your turnover, and marketplaces will not activate a goods listing without a GSTIN. If you sell only from your own website or store, the ordinary registration rules apply to you the same way they apply to an offline shop: turnover threshold for your state and supply type, plus the other triggers such as inter-state supply. The thresholds and the exemptions differ for goods versus services and for special category states, and they have been amended more than once, so check the current position on gst.gov.in or with a chartered accountant rather than trusting a number quoted in an article. That distinction — marketplace versus your own store — is the single fact that decides whether GST registration is a prerequisite or a decision you can time.
What documents do you need for the GST application?
The list depends on your business constitution, but the pattern is consistent. You need identity and PAN of the proprietor, partners or directors, along with photographs. You need proof of the principal place of business: an electricity bill, property tax receipt or municipal khata copy if you own it, or a rent agreement plus the owner's NOC and a utility bill if you rent it. You need bank account proof — a cancelled cheque, the first page of a passbook, or a bank statement. Companies, LLPs and partnerships also need constitution documents: certificate of incorporation, LLP agreement or partnership deed, plus a board resolution or letter of authorisation naming the authorised signatory.
Companies and LLPs typically have to sign with a Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) rather than Aadhaar OTP. A proprietor with an Aadhaar linked to their mobile number usually has the simplest path, because Aadhaar e-KYC authentication is what triggers the faster processing route.
Home-based sellers often stall here. If you run the business from a residence held in a parent's or spouse's name, you generally need a consent letter from the owner along with an address proof in the owner's name. That is a routine document, not an obstacle, but it is the one people do not have ready on the day they sit down to apply.
How long does GST registration take, and what goes wrong?
Processing time varies with whether Aadhaar authentication succeeds and whether the officer raises a query. If the department asks for clarification, it issues a notice in Form GST REG-03 and you respond in Form GST REG-04 within the stated window. Missing that window is the most avoidable cause of rejection.
The queries that recur are mundane. The name on the application does not match the PAN database character for character. The uploaded address proof is illegible, or the utility bill is older than the period the portal accepts. The rent agreement is unsigned or unstamped. The Aadhaar-linked mobile number is out of date, so e-KYC fails and the application drops into physical verification of premises. Fixing these before you submit is faster than fixing them after a REG-03 arrives.
A second point worth planning: registration is state-wise. If you hold stock in a warehouse in another state — including a marketplace fulfilment centre — you generally need a separate registration for that state and an address proof for that premises. Sellers who ship everything themselves from one location avoid this entirely.
What changes for you after the GSTIN arrives?
A GSTIN is an ongoing filing obligation, not a certificate you frame. You issue tax invoices carrying your GSTIN, the customer's GSTIN where applicable, the HSN or SAC code, the taxable value and the tax split into CGST and SGST for intra-state supply or IGST for inter-state supply. You file returns on the schedule applicable to your registration type, and you file them even in months with no sales — nil returns are still returns, and non-filing attracts late fees and can lead to cancellation.
This is where invoicing discipline matters more than the registration itself. If your order records do not carry the buyer's state, the invoice value and the tax split, reconciling your returns at the end of the month becomes manual work. HOD Media's hosted online stores generate GST invoices as part of the order flow, so the tax detail exists on the order record rather than being reconstructed later from a spreadsheet.
Should you register before you start selling, or wait?
If your plan is to list on marketplaces, register first. The listing process will ask for the GSTIN, and applying while you have unsold inventory sitting idle is a poor use of a fortnight.
If your plan is to sell from your own store — your own domain, your own payment collection — you have a genuine choice, and it is worth making deliberately. Registering voluntarily lets you claim input tax credit on purchases, packaging, courier charges and platform costs, and it lets you supply to businesses that will not buy from an unregistered vendor. Against that, you take on monthly or quarterly filing and the cost of someone to do it. Many small sellers begin unregistered on their own website, watch turnover against the applicable threshold, and register before they cross it or before they take on B2B buyers. That is a reasonable sequence, provided you know the threshold that applies to your state and supply type and you track against it honestly.
Where does a store platform fit into any of this?
A platform cannot obtain a GSTIN for you. Registration is between you and the GST portal, and no store builder, marketplace or reseller can file REG-01 on your behalf without your PAN, Aadhaar and documents.
What a platform can do is make life after registration less clerical. On HOD Media, a small business runs a hosted store on its own custom domain, collects payment by UPI, card or cash on delivery, and pushes order notifications to customers over WhatsApp and email automatically. Courier integrations work against Indian pincodes, so serviceability and shipping are handled inside the same order flow that produced the GST invoice. Agencies and resellers who set up stores for other businesses can use the white-label option to do it under their own brand.
None of that removes the filing obligation. It only means the underlying data — what you sold, to which state, at what tax value — is captured at the point of sale instead of being assembled from memory the week a return is due. If you take one thing to your accountant, make it clean order records; the registration itself is a form on a government website, and you can complete it yourself.