How do I actually go from a rough idea to a working prototype?
The short answer
Don't design in a vacuum, sketch the concept, then get it into a factory's hands as a rough CAD file or even a hand-built mockup within your first few weeks, because feedback on a physical thing beats another week in Figma. Most Indian manufacturers will iterate off a reference sample (buy something similar off Amazon/IndiaMART and mark it up) faster than off a spec alone. Budget for 2-3 rounds before you have something worth showing a customer.
A quick summary to orient you. The real value is below: the resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it, not us.
Here are the resources
Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time. India-specific ones carry a badge.
Why we picked it
The clearest plain-English walk-through of the design-to-CAD-to-prototype pipeline, useful as a checklist even if you outsource every step to a factory.
Why we picked it
A free, structured course to get a Shopify store from zero to its first sale fast - the cheapest way to test whether Shopify's workflow fits you before you commit a monthly plan to it.
