How a Farmer from West Bengal Built a 2.5 Crore Dropshipping Business in One Year

Today I want to introduce you to someone special. His name is Mohammad Mamun. He is from Bardhaman, West Bengal. He is a farmer. And in the last one year, he has generated 2.5 crore in revenue and around 30 lakh in profit through his e-commerce business.

This is his story.

Where it all started

Mamun comes from a farming family. His father is a farmer. His grandfather was a farmer. That is the family profession. He did his MBA with the traditional Indian mindset of getting a job. He even got one. But it was a typical sales job and it did not feel right.

In the background, since 2022, Mamun had been exploring the idea of dropshipping. He was watching US dropshipping content on YouTube. Then he found my channel where I was talking about Indian e-commerce dropshipping. That is when it clicked. He was already living in India. Why not do it here?

But two years passed between knowing about it and actually starting. He was researching, watching, consuming information. He finally decided to go all in during July 2024.

There was one problem. He had no capital.

The lie that started everything

Mamun went to his father and told him that he needed one lakh rupees to give to someone who would get him a job. This is India. This kind of thing happens all the time. His father believed him and gave him the money.

That one lakh was his starting capital for dropshipping.

He kept another one lakh aside as a safety net. And he jumped in.

But here is where things went wrong. He made a lot of mistakes. He was consuming too much information from social media, getting confused about what to do and what not to do. He was watching half the course material, grabbing half the information, and then rushing into execution.

He lost 60,000 rupees. His entire budget was nearly wiped out. He was left with just 4,000 rupees in his account.

And his parents still thought he was working a job.

The turning point

When Mamun hit that low point, one of our coaches, Deep sir, gave him a proper scolding. Treated him like his own kid and told him exactly what he was doing wrong.

The biggest mistake? Mamun was getting emotionally attached to products. He was spending time on a product, falling in love with it, and then hoping it would work instead of reading the data. He was not turning off campaigns at the right time. He was running on hope instead of numbers.

That scolding changed everything.

Mamun went back to the course material. In one week, he watched every single module four times. Not just passively. He was extracting different insights each time. Three rounds of deep learning, one round of revision.

Then he started implementing with just 40,000 rupees.

To get that 40,000, he told another lie. He showed his father his remaining balance and said it was his salary credit. Asked for 40,000 more, promising to return it next month from his next salary. He had no idea if anything would work. But the confidence had come because he had finally understood his mistakes and found the solutions.

17 products before the first win

Before Mamun found a winning product, he tested 17 products. Seventeen. And during that testing phase, he was still making mistakes. He was even killing potential winners because he did not know how to read the data properly.

But he kept going.

How Mamun finds winning products

Mamun shared some clear principles about what works in the Indian market.

Product selection matters more than anything. The product should be small in size, visually eye-catching, and not boring to look at. He noticed that products with an Indian mindset perform best. Think about Naaptol ads on TV. That mentality still exists in Indian consumers. Essential products, kitchen products, everyday utility items, these categories work well.

The offer makes or breaks a sale. Indian consumers respond to perceived value. If you are selling one product, bundle it. One plus one free. Two products together at a discount. The offer needs to feel irresistible. Mamun uses Vitals app on Shopify to create these bundles.

Product research through Meta Ads Library. Mamun started with Facebook's ad library, looking at which products had the most ads running. He checks KPI points that he learned through the program. Now there are many more methods available, including tools on the Ecom Edge platform, but the ad library remains a solid starting point.

The ad creative formula

Mamun is honest about this. He is not a naturally creative person. But he learned a system.

The hook is everything. In India especially, the first three seconds of your video ad decide if someone watches or scrolls past. Mamun uses product-related hooks, not transition hooks. A transition hook is when you show two cards colliding and then reveal a product. That might get views, but it attracts low-quality audiences. Instead, show the actual problem your product solves.

For example, he ran a baby head protection product. Instead of showing a baby actually falling (which would cause problems with ad policies), he showed softer angles. A baby gently bumping against a wall. A toddler playing and lightly hitting something. The viewer who is a parent immediately understands the problem.

Three creatives per product, different hooks. For testing, Mamun creates three video ads with different hooks but similar middle and end sections. He calls these "version one" videos. The hook changes, the introduction varies slightly, but the call to action stays the same. This is efficient for rapid testing.

Source clips from Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok. Never download clips directly from Facebook or Instagram. Those platforms have metadata that gets detected. If you must use a clip from those platforms, break it into small 2-second segments and shuffle them into your video at different points.

Visuals over text. Indian audiences want to see the product in action. Do not overload your ads with text. Use voiceovers instead. Tools like Desi Vocals and ElevenLabs make this easy now.

The testing and scaling blueprint

Here is Mamun's exact process for testing and scaling.

Testing budget: 1,000 rupees per day for one product. Two days maximum. One campaign with 10 ad sets, each with 3 creatives and 100 rupees budget per ad set. Single interest targeting per ad set.

Front-end metrics to watch: CPC (cost per click) should be below 7.5 rupees. CTR (click-through rate) should look healthy at the ad set level. If CPC is bad on day one, the interest targeting is off. Do not edit existing ad sets. Turn them off and move on.

Day one results: If 7 out of 10 ad sets have bad CPC, turn those 7 off. Keep the 3 that are performing.

Day two decision: Now look at CPP (cost per purchase). This should be 8 to 10 percent of your selling price. If you are selling a product at 1,000 rupees, your cost per purchase should be 80 to 100 rupees. If your margins are good, you can stretch to 12 percent. Beyond that, kill it.

Do not get emotionally attached. If a product does not work, move to the next one. This is the single biggest lesson Mamun learned the hard way.

The RTO problem and how to handle it

RTO (return to origin) is a real challenge in Indian e-commerce. Not every order gets delivered. Sometimes 30 to 40 percent of orders come back. In extreme cases, even 50 to 60 percent. This is an industry problem, not a dropshipping problem.

Mamun's approach: let 100 orders come in, then pause the campaign for two to three days. Wait for deliveries. Check the actual RTO percentage. If delivery rate drops below 40 percent, that product is done. Turn it off.

To reduce RTO, enable OTP verification at checkout using tools like Releasit COD. In the initial stages, call every customer to confirm their order. When volume gets too high, you can hire calling agencies.

But the real RTO fix is choosing better products. Good products with real utility naturally have better delivery rates.

Why Mamun avoids popular dropshipping platforms

Mamun does not use the popular Indian dropshipping platforms. His reason is simple. He found that some platforms would mark orders as RTO even when the product was delivered. This meant his margin got eaten and he was paying RTO charges on orders that were actually completed.

His solution was to find private suppliers. He made 300 calls in two days to find reliable ones. When you work with private suppliers, you pay upfront, but you control the quality and the shipping. You need to keep four to five suppliers on hand because no single supplier has every type of product.

For testing with private suppliers, Mamun buys 20 units upfront. If the product does not work after 5 orders, he tells the supplier to keep the remaining 15 and swaps the credit for 20 units of a different product. Minimal waste.

He uses Shiprocket for logistics and has found Delhivery and Xpressbees to work well as delivery partners.

Scaling: vertical and horizontal

Once a product is validated, Mamun scales in two ways.

Vertical scaling: Take the winning ad set and increase budget by 20 percent per day.

Horizontal scaling: Duplicate the winning ad set three times with the same interest targeting, but double the budget. Then treat each new ad set the same way as during testing. Check front-end metrics. If it performs, keep scaling.

When to stop scaling: Watch the delivery percentage. If it drops by 5 percent from a healthy 60 percent, that is okay. But if it falls to 45 percent and keeps dropping, shut it down. Extract whatever profit you can and move to the next product.

Pricing strategy

For initial testing, Mamun uses a 2.5x multiple. If the product costs 100 rupees (including fulfillment), sell it at 250 rupees. Once you understand your numbers deeply, you can switch to fixed margin pricing like adding 500 rupees per unit. But that requires knowing your numbers inside out.

How life changed

Before dropshipping, Mamun was a farmer who would go to shopping malls just to walk around. He would not buy anything. That was his reality.

One year later, he bought his father a bike. He built a house. He started traveling. He bought a MacBook. He was about to buy the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

But more than the material things, it was the shift in identity. He started investing in himself. Better clothes, better experiences, better tools. His parents, who still think of him as running an online shop, can see the money coming in. And as Mamun puts it, your parents are never against your passion. They just do not want to see you struggle financially. Once the money comes, the support follows.

The bottom line

Mamun's journey is proof that your background does not determine your future. A farmer from West Bengal, with no funding, no connections, and no experience, built a multi-crore e-commerce business in 12 months.

The formula is not complicated. Learn properly. Test rapidly. Read the data, not your emotions. Find good suppliers. Scale what works. Kill what does not. And never stop moving to the next product.

Indian e-commerce is just getting started. The future is massive. If you have 70 to 80 thousand rupees in budget and the dedication to execute, this is your time.

Stop overthinking. Start doing.