How do I even figure out which licenses apply to MY specific product, is there a single checklist?
The short answer
There's no single universal checklist because it's genuinely category-driven: food and beverages need FSSAI, cosmetics and topical/ingestible wellness products often need CDSCO (and sometimes AYUSH licensing for ayurvedic claims), certain electronics need BIS CRS, and literally every packaged physical product needs Legal Metrology label compliance regardless of category. Start by naming your product's exact category and searching '[category] + license India' rather than a generic 'D2C licenses' search, and when a product straddles categories (a cosmetic device, say, or a food supplement) get a one-time consult with a regulatory consultant rather than guessing, misclassification is the expensive mistake here, not the license fee itself.
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.
3 resources3 India-specific3 link-checked
Read
📄 Article
✓ Link checkedIndiaFreeBeginner
Why we picked it
Written specifically with D2C brands in mind rather than restaurants/manufacturers, so the examples and edge cases (private-label snacks, D2C beverage brands) actually match what founders here are building.
Why we picked it
A founder-readable breakdown of the CRS process, lab testing, Form I, brand authorisation, without the dense regulatory language of the official BIS pages.
Why we picked it
Specifically frames Legal Metrology as an e-commerce/D2C compliance issue, including the online-listing disclosure requirement most founders don't know applies beyond the physical label.
