Dukaan builds a shop for consumers. Catafy runs wholesale — and the shop.

01

Quick verdict: Catafy vs Dukaan

Dukaan and Catafy solve different problems that happen to look similar from the outside. Dukaan is a storefront builder for selling to consumers: a public shop, a cart, payments and delivery. Catafy is a catalogue and ordering platform for selling to businesses — with a consumer storefront included as one of its channels. If your buyers are the public, Dukaan is a fair choice. If your buyers are retailers, dealers or distributors, Dukaan has no answer for the questions that matter: who sees which price, what minimum applies, and who is browsing right now.

02

What each platform is built for

Dukaan’s promise is a shop in minutes: upload products, get a link, take orders and payments from consumers. That is a genuine need and Dukaan serves it. Everything in the product assumes the buyer is an anonymous member of the public who sees the same price as everyone else and buys one or two units.

Catafy assumes the opposite: the buyer is a known business account with a negotiated rate, a minimum, a history and a relationship. The catalogue can be public, private or semi-private; prices sit behind OTP; MOQ and minimum order amount are enforced; live analytics show which account is looking at what; and order updates go out from your own WhatsApp number, with SMS, email and push as extra channels. A B2C storefront is included so consumer sales run from the same inventory — but it is one channel, not the whole product.

03

Catafy vs Dukaan for wholesalers

A wholesaler on Dukaan hits three walls immediately: there is one price per product, there is no minimum quantity, and anyone with the link sees everything. Workarounds — hiding prices, taking orders by chat, running a separate sheet for trade buyers — recreate the manual process the store was meant to remove.

• Price lists per buyer group — retailer, distributor and export rates on the same product.
• OTP-gated access with approval — trade buyers verify by phone, you approve who gets in.
• MOQ and MOA — per product and per order, applied automatically at checkout.
• Set and variant ordering — size sets and colour runs in one line.
• Screenshot protection — shield rates and designs from being forwarded.

04

Catafy vs Dukaan for manufacturers

Manufacturers rarely want a public shop as their main channel — they want to release a new range to approved dealers first, at dealer rates, and watch which dealer engages. Catafy’s private catalogues, seller approval and live tracking do that; catalogue-access approval messages go out automatically on WhatsApp. A Dukaan store, by design, shows the range to whoever opens the link at retail price.

Where a manufacturer also sells direct to consumers, Catafy runs the public storefront from the same product master, so retail and trade never fall out of sync on stock or images.

05

Catafy vs Dukaan for distributors

Distributors need several catalogues from one inventory, shareable collections for a route or season, team seats for field reps, and automated order confirmations so the inbox does not become the bottleneck. Catafy provides plan-based team seats, per-segment catalogues, collections, live visitor tracking across the team, and WhatsApp / SMS / email / push notifications from one settings screen. A single consumer storefront cannot represent a distributor’s retailer network.

06

Feature-by-feature comparison

What Catafy includes, and what to verify on a live Dukaan account before deciding. Check Dukaan’s current plan page directly — features and fees change.

07

Buyer experience: consumer shop vs trade catalogue

A Dukaan store gives a consumer a familiar shopping flow: browse, add to cart, pay, wait for delivery. A Catafy trade catalogue gives a retailer a familiar buying flow: open the link from WhatsApp, verify by OTP, see their own rate card, order sets and quantities with MOQ warnings inline, and receive an automatic confirmation from your business number. Both open in the browser with no download; the Catafy branded app is optional.

Ask a real retailer to place a test order on both. The difference is obvious within a minute.

08

Transaction fees, payments and shipping

Catafy charges no percentage on orders or payments on any plan. Razorpay, PayU, PhonePe, PayPal and Ziina are supported, plus an upload-payment-proof option for buyers who pay by bank transfer or UPI outside a gateway — common in trade. Shiprocket handles shipping. GST fields are captured at checkout and printed on estimate PDFs.

09

Moving from Dukaan to Catafy

Because Catafy runs both a public storefront and trade catalogues from one inventory, migration from Dukaan does not mean giving up consumer sales — it means adding the wholesale layer that was missing. The onboarding call included on every plan covers the import and the split between retail and trade pricing.

1. 1

   Export products from Dukaan

   Download your product list with prices, categories and stock as Excel or CSV, and collect product images by SKU.

2. 2

   Separate trade and retail pricing

   Decide which buyers are wholesale and which are consumers, and set the rate card and MOQ for each trade group.

3. 3

   Bulk import into Catafy

   Map columns, import with images and attributes, and check variants, sets and prices on a sample.

4. 4

   Publish two fronts from one inventory

   Create a public B2C storefront and one or more OTP-gated wholesale catalogues that share the same stock.

5. 5

   Connect payments, shipping and WhatsApp

   Link Razorpay, PayU or PhonePe, connect Shiprocket, and connect your WhatsApp Business number via Whaaty for automatic order updates.

6. 6

   Move buyers and switch DNS

   Announce the new catalogue and storefront on WhatsApp, map your custom domain to Catafy, and retire the old store after two weeks.

10

Pricing: Catafy vs Dukaan

Catafy pricing is flat and public. Every plan includes unlimited orders, online payments with zero transaction fees from Catafy, and a 7-day free trial with no card required. Prices below are per month on annual billing, exclusive of 18% GST. Mobile, email and WhatsApp OTP login options for buyers are included on Growth and Scale; Starter uses a single login type.

Compare on effective annual cost including any transaction percentage, the product count you will reach, the number of team members who need logins, and whether a custom domain or app sits on a higher tier. Check Dukaan’s current pricing page directly rather than relying on a quoted figure.

11

When Dukaan is the right choice

If you sell only to consumers, one unit at a time, at one price, and never need to know who is browsing, a storefront builder is the simpler product and Dukaan is a reasonable one. Catafy’s B2C storefront would work too, but you would be paying for a wholesale layer you do not use.

12

How to decide in ten minutes

• Are any of your buyers businesses that reorder regularly?
• Do at least two buyer groups pay different prices for the same product?
• Do you ever refuse orders because they are too small?
• Would it hurt if your prices or designs were forwarded to a competitor?
• Does anyone follow up based on who viewed what?
• Do you type order confirmations by hand on WhatsApp?
• Do you want B2B and B2C from one inventory rather than two tools?
• How much are transaction fees costing you per year today?

Three or more yes answers: Catafy. Almost all no: a storefront builder is enough for now.

13

Related reading

• Best Dukaan alternative for B2B →The full switching guide
• Catafy vs Dukaan comparison (blog) →Longer editorial take
• B2C online store features →The consumer storefront side of Catafy
• B2B catalogue features →Private pricing, MOQ, OTP access
• Online payments and GST →Gateways, fees, GST checkout
• How to create an online store in India →Step-by-step guide