If you’re running a D2C brand in India, you already know the pain. A customer orders via COD, the delivery partner attempts delivery 2-3 times, the customer refuses — and you’re stuck paying forward + return shipping, packaging costs, and sometimes even product damage.
The average RTO rate for Indian ecommerce brands is 25-35%. For COD-heavy categories like fashion and accessories, it can hit 40-50%. That’s not a logistics problem — it’s a business-ending problem.
One brand we worked with took their RTO from 35% to 8% in 90 days using exactly the playbook below. The receipts are in our case study. 200+ Indian D2C brands have run versions of these 15 plays. Here’s exactly how.
Before fixing RTO, you need to understand why it happens:
Each cause has a different fix. Let’s tackle them all.
30% of failed deliveries happen because of wrong addresses. Use India Post’s PIN code API or services like Delhivery’s address intelligence to:
Expected impact: 5-8% RTO reduction
This is the single most effective RTO reduction tactic. A ₹40 COD fee doesn’t deter genuine buyers but eliminates 60-70% of impulse/fake orders.
Here’s the psychology: when someone pays even ₹40 upfront, they’ve made a financial commitment. They’re far more likely to accept delivery.
How to implement on Shopify: Use apps like COD Fee Manager or add it as a line item in your checkout flow.
Expected impact: 10-15% RTO reduction
Send an automated WhatsApp message immediately after a COD order is placed:
This simple flow catches 80% of fake and impulse orders before you even ship them.
Expected impact: 8-12% RTO reduction
Instead of removing COD (which kills conversions), incentivize prepaid payments:
The goal: shift your prepaid ratio from 30% to 60%+. Every prepaid order has near-zero RTO risk.
Expected impact: 5-10% RTO reduction (indirect, by shifting payment mix)
Not all courier partners perform equally in every PIN code. Use a multi-courier aggregator (Shiprocket, Shipway, or Pickrr) and configure rules:
Expected impact: 3-5% RTO reduction
When a delivery attempt fails, most brands do nothing and let the courier retry blindly. Instead:
Expected impact: 5-8% RTO reduction
Use your order history data to score every new order:
Flag high-risk orders for manual verification or automatic COD-to-prepaid conversion.
Expected impact: 3-5% RTO reduction
This sounds basic, but 15-20% of returns happen because the product didn’t match expectations:
Expected impact: 3-5% RTO reduction
Every day between order and delivery increases RTO risk. Target:
If you’re currently taking 7-10 days, you’re losing orders to buyer’s remorse. Consider warehousing closer to demand clusters.
Expected impact: 3-5% RTO reduction
Show delivery availability before the customer adds to cart. Nothing kills trust faster than “Sorry, we don’t deliver to your area” at checkout.
Use Shiprocket’s or your courier’s serviceability API to show estimated delivery dates on the product page itself.
Expected impact: 2-3% RTO reduction (prevents undeliverable orders)
Replace the generic courier tracking page with a branded tracking experience on your own domain. This:
Between order placement and delivery, engage the customer:
Each touchpoint reinforces the purchase decision and reduces cancellation intent.
Maintain a database of phone numbers and addresses with high RTO history. For repeat offenders:
Expected impact: 2-3% RTO reduction
Good packaging reduces RTO in two ways:
Include a thank-you card, a discount code for next purchase, and ensure the product is presented beautifully inside.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Build an RTO analytics dashboard that tracks:
This data tells you exactly where to focus your RTO reduction efforts.
No single strategy will take you from 35% RTO to 10%. But when you stack 5-6 of these together:
| Strategy Combination | Expected RTO Rate |
|---|---|
| No optimization | 30-40% |
| + COD fee + WhatsApp confirmation | 18-22% |
| + Prepaid incentives + Address verification | 12-16% |
| + NDR automation + Risk scoring | 8-12% |
| + All strategies combined | 5-8% |
Most brands implement 2–3 of these strategies, hit a 20% RTO floor, and stall. The compound move — courier optimisation + COD verification + WhatsApp NDR loop + risk scoring + branded tracking + buyer-history blocks, all wired together — is what gets you under 10%. That’s a 4–6 week implementation across logistics, retention, and analytics. We’ve done it for 200+ Indian D2C brands. ₹385Cr+ revenue processed. 4.5x average ROI. 98% retention.
The Shopify build is ₹50,000 fixed-price with no AMC — bug fixes for what we ship stay included for the lifetime of the store. The RTO work sits on the optional ₹30K/month Growth Retainer, only when you want active month-over-month optimisation.
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