◇ Case study / 08 · 2023
Lakshmi Herbals
Hair-oil e-commerce · Freelance
◇ The problem
What we were trying to solve
A small Indian hair-care brand with two SKUs needed a DTC storefront, payment processing for India, and the SEO foundations to grow organic traffic without a paid budget.
◇ The solution
How it shipped
Built LakshmiHerbals.com on Shopify with a custom theme matched to the brand identity, Razorpay for Indian payment acceptance (UPI + cards + wallets), and on-page SEO covering metadata, schema, product copy, and image alt text. Tightened the product detail and checkout pages for conversion.
◇ Decisions
Engineering choices worth flagging
Razorpay over Stripe
Stripe doesn't accept Indian merchants directly. Razorpay handles UPI, the dominant Indian payment rail.
Custom theme, not a template
Two SKUs means the storefront IS the brand. A template would have been faster but indistinguishable from a thousand other Shopify stores.
Organic-first, not paid
Budget didn't support paid ads. Built SEO from day one so traffic compounded without an ongoing spend.
◇ Results
What shipped
◇ Stack
Tools used
◇ Keep exploring