I still remember the sound my phone made at 11:47 PM on a Wednesday night. It wasn't anything special—just a regular notification ping. But when I looked at the screen and saw "New Order Received - ApniDukaan," my heart actually skipped a beat. Someone I didn't know, had never met, and would probably never meet, had just spent their money on something I built.

That moment felt surreal. But what came after that notification—the next three months of running my first e-commerce venture—taught me more about business than any textbook ever could. And if I'm being honest, most of those lessons came from things going wrong, not right.

How This Actually Started

Let me back up. ApniDukaan wasn't my idea in the way startup origin stories usually go. I didn't wake up one day with a brilliant vision for revolutionizing e-commerce. This project came out of Master's Union's 3-month dropshipping challenge—a program designed to teach students about business by making them actually do it. The premise was straightforward: build a functional online store, source products, handle everything from payments to shipping, and try to make real sales. No simulations. No hypotheticals. Real money, real customers, real problems.

I was excited and, looking back, incredibly naive about what I was getting into. I'd just finished a Business Management unit on marketing and operations. I'd read case studies about successful e-commerce companies. I thought I understood how this worked. Spoiler: I didn't.

The Part Where I Thought I Had It Figured Out

The first few weeks felt productive. I spent hours building the store from scratch—setting up the UI, designing the cart system, integrating payment gateways. This was the technical side, and while debugging was frustrating, at least I understood the problems. Code either works or it doesn't. There's a logic to it.

I remember staying up until 3 AM trying to fix a bug where the cart would randomly empty itself when users clicked the checkout button. When I finally found the issue (a state management problem in my React code), I felt like a genius. "I'm building a real business!" I thought. Then I had to actually figure out what to sell.

This is where my confidence started cracking. I spent days researching products, looking at what was trending, checking profit margins. Everything looked promising on paper. I settled on a mix of phone accessories and small home goods—things that seemed easy to source and ship. What I didn't realize was that choosing products isn't just about margins and trends. It's about understanding customers in a way that I, as a 17-year-old student, definitely didn't.

The First Reality Check: Nobody Cares About Your Store

I launched ApniDukaan on a Saturday morning. I'd worked hard on the design. The checkout process was smooth. The product photos looked decent. I posted about it on social media, sent the link to friends and family, and then... waited. And waited. The first week: zero sales. Not even from family members who'd promised to support me.

The second week: still nothing. My store had visitors—the analytics showed people were coming to the site—but nobody was buying. They'd add items to their cart and then disappear. This was crushing. I'd spent weeks building this thing, and it felt like I'd created something nobody wanted. I started questioning everything. Was the design bad? Were the prices wrong? Did people not trust the site?

I reached out to one of the mentors at Master's Union and explained the situation. His response was simple and kind of brutal: "Why would anyone buy from you?" Not in a mean way—he was genuinely asking. What made my store different from Amazon? From local shops? Why would someone trust a website they'd never heard of, run by a teenager, when they could get the same products from established platforms? I didn't have a good answer.

Learning Marketing the Hard Way

This is when I realized that building the store was actually the easy part. Getting people to care about it was the real challenge. I started running Facebook and Instagram campaigns. I'd learned about digital marketing in my Business Management class, but applying it was completely different from answering exam questions about it. My first ad campaign was a disaster. I spent 2,000 rupees (money I'd saved up) and got maybe 50 clicks to my site. Zero sales. I'd targeted too broadly, used generic product photos, and written ad copy that said basically nothing: "Great products at great prices!"

Who cares? Everyone says that. I tried again, this time focusing on a specific product and creating actual content around it. Instead of just showing a phone case, I made a short video showing how it protected a phone from drops. Instead of "great prices," I focused on fast delivery to specific cities in India.

This worked slightly better. I got my first sale—not from the ad, but from someone who'd seen it and then found my Instagram page. Small progress, but progress. The thing I learned about marketing: it's not about how clever you are. It's about understanding what your customer actually needs and showing them you can solve their problem. This sounds obvious when I write it, but I had to fail multiple times before I actually understood it.

When Everything Started Going Wrong

Let me tell you about Week 6, which I now refer to as "The Week Everything Broke." I'd finally started getting semi-consistent orders. Maybe 2-3 per day. Not amazing, but enough to feel like I was actually running a business. I was managing inventory, coordinating with suppliers, handling customer service emails.

Then my supplier called and said they couldn't fulfill my order for phone cases—the ones that had become my best-selling product. Stock issue. Would be delayed by two weeks. I already had five confirmed orders for those cases. I panicked. I'd promised 3-5 day delivery. Now I had to either find a new supplier immediately or tell customers their orders would be delayed by weeks. I spent an entire day calling different suppliers, trying to negotiate rush orders, checking quality. I eventually found someone who could deliver, but at a higher cost that killed my margin on those orders.

Then, two days later, a customer complained that their product arrived damaged. This had never happened before. I didn't have a clear returns policy because I hadn't thought that far ahead. I ended up refunding them fully and eating the cost of the product and shipping.

That same week, my payment gateway went down for six hours right when I was running an ad campaign. People were trying to checkout and couldn't. I lost sales and spent 40 rupees on ads that led nowhere. Oh, and I had my IB Math mock exam that Thursday, which I definitely didn't study enough for because I was busy putting out these fires.

The 2 AM Customer Service Experience

Here's something they don't tell you about e-commerce: customers don't care about your schedule.

I got a WhatsApp message at 2:15 AM from someone asking if their order had shipped yet. They'd ordered it 12 hours earlier and were already anxious about it. I was asleep. I woke up to this message, plus two more that had come in after, each more urgent than the last.

"Hello??" "Is this a scam site?" "I'm reporting this." I immediately responded, explained the shipping timeline, provided tracking information, apologized for the delay in responding. They calmed down. Crisis averted. But this made me realize: customer anxiety is real. People are spending their money—money they worked for—on your store. They want reassurance. They want updates. They want to feel like you care. I started being much more proactive about communication. Sending shipping confirmations immediately. Following up with tracking numbers. Even adding a personal note that said, "Thanks for supporting a student-run business—your order is on its way!"

These small touches actually made a difference. My customer satisfaction improved. I got fewer anxious messages. One person even left a review saying they appreciated the personal service.

What the Numbers Actually Showed

Let me be transparent about the business side, because I think it's important to share real numbers, not just inspirational stories.

Over three months:

• Total revenue: ₹100,000+
• Actual profit after costs: ₹20,000
• Time invested: approximately 200+ hours
• Hourly rate if I'd worked a normal job: I would have made more

From a pure financial perspective, ApniDukaan was not a success. If I'd worked part-time somewhere else, I would have earned more money for less stress.

But that's not the point, and I'm glad I didn't think about it that way at the time. The value wasn't in the profit—it was in what I learned.

The Unexpected Lessons

Margins Are Everything: I learned this painfully. I'd price products thinking, "That's a decent markup!" But then I'd factor in: platform fees, payment gateway fees, shipping costs, packaging materials, advertising costs, returns and refunds. Suddenly, my 30% margin became 5%. On some products, I actually lost money when you factored in everything.

Customer Service Is Your Real Product: People can buy phone cases anywhere. What made some of them buy from ApniDukaan was how I treated them. Fast responses, clear communication, genuine care when something went wrong. This mattered more than having the cheapest prices.

Cash Flow Is Not Profit: This confused me initially. I'd see money coming into my account from sales and think, "Great, I'm making money!" But that money was already allocated—some for paying suppliers, some for pending shipping costs, some for ad campaigns I'd committed to. Just because money is in your account doesn't mean it's yours to spend.

Scaling Is Harder Than Starting: Getting my first sale was hard. Getting to consistent daily sales was harder. But the hardest part was figuring out how to grow beyond that. I plateaued at around 2-3 orders per day. To get to 10+ orders, I would have needed significantly better marketing, more supplier relationships, better inventory systems. I realized I was already at the limit of what one person could manage while also being a full-time IB student.

What I Still Don't Understand

Even after three months, there's so much about e-commerce I don't understand.

How do real e-commerce companies handle inventory at scale? I struggled with 50 units. How do they manage thousands?
How do you build a brand that people actually trust? ApniDukaan was always "that one kid's store." How do you become a name people recognize?
What's the right balance between organic growth and paid advertising? I never figured this out. Every rupee I spent on ads felt like a gamble.
How do successful dropshippers maintain quality control when they never see the products themselves? I had a few quality issues that I couldn't have prevented because I wasn't handling the inventory directly.

The Master's Union Competition Win

Here's the part that probably sounds like I'm bragging, but I promise I'm not: ApniDukaan won 1st place in Master's Union's Next-Gen Summer Skills competition.

When they announced it, I was genuinely shocked. My numbers weren't the highest. Other students had made more revenue, had better-looking stores, had more innovative products. But during the presentation, the judges focused on something else: learning. They asked what went wrong, what I'd do differently, how I handled challenges. They wanted to see that I'd actually learned from the experience, not just executed it.

I talked about the supplier issue and how I'd built backup relationships. I discussed the customer service mistakes and how I'd improved my communication systems. I showed them my failed ad campaigns alongside the ones that worked.

One judge said something that stuck with me: "Business school teaches you theory. This taught you reality." That's why I won—not because ApniDukaan was the most successful store, but because I could articulate what I'd learned from both the successes and failures.

Would I Do It Again?

People ask me this, and my answer is complicated: yes, but differently.

I wouldn't necessarily start another dropshipping store. That model has limitations that I now understand better. But would I take on another project where I have to learn business by actually doing it, with real stakes and real consequences? Absolutely. The experience of having real customers, real money on the line, and real problems to solve taught me things that no case study ever could. I learned to think on my feet, to negotiate with suppliers, to communicate with anxious customers, to manage my own anxiety when things went wrong.

But I'd also give myself more time to plan. I'd research suppliers more thoroughly before committing. I'd start smaller and scale gradually rather than trying to launch with 20 products immediately. I'd set clearer expectations for myself about what success looks like.

The Real Win

That first "Order Confirmed" notification at 11:47 PM was exciting. But you know what was more valuable? The customer message I got two months later that said: "Thanks for the quick delivery and great service. Will order again."

That person came back. Not because my store was perfect, but because I'd delivered on my promise and made them feel valued.

If I had to sum up what ApniDukaan taught me, it's this: business isn't about building the perfect product or having the smartest strategy. It's about solving real problems for real people, and doing it in a way that makes them trust you. I'm still learning what that means. I still have so much to figure out about business, about marketing, about operations. But at least now I know enough to know what I don't know. 

Have you built anything while still being a student? How did you handle the learning curve? I'd love to hear your stories—the messy, complicated ones, not just the polished successes.