Where to list your startup or product in India

Before you list: prepare one kit

Every platform asks for much the same things. Prepare them once and each listing takes minutes:

• Your product’s name, a one-line tagline (under 60 characters), a short description and a longer one.
• A square logo (at least 512 × 512 pixels), three to five screenshots and, if you can, a short demo video.
• Your link with UTM tags (?utm_source=producthunt, ?utm_source=peerlist…) so your analytics shows which listing sent each visitor.
• A maker profile on X or LinkedIn: many platforms show who built the product.

Use the same name and description everywhere. Consistent details help search engines connect every listing to your site, and help people recognise you.

Launch platforms: a burst of attention

These work best on a launch day you prepare for, with people ready to try the product, comment and share.

• Product Hunt is the best known. A launch is featured for one day, which starts at midnight US Pacific time (12:30 or 1:30 p.m. IST, depending on US daylight saving). Its audience is mostly tech and SaaS, much of it outside India.
• Peerlist, a professional network popular with Indian developers and makers, runs a weekly Launchpad for new products.
• Hacker News (Show HN) suits developer tools and technical products. Describe it plainly, without marketing language, and stay to answer comments.
• Indie Hackers is a community of bootstrapped founders. Share your story and your numbers, not an advert.
• Reddit can send real users from the right subreddit, but most ban self-promotion. Read each subreddit’s rules and take part before you post.
• BetaList is for products still in beta that want early sign-ups.

Directories and comparison sites: steady search traffic

These pages rank for searches like “[category] software” and “[competitor] alternatives”, and keep sending visitors long after launch day.

• AlternativeTo reaches people looking for an alternative to a product they already know.
• SaaSHub is a software directory with alternatives and comparisons.
• G2 and Capterra are review sites for business software, worth it once you have customers who will write reviews.
• GitHub, for open-source projects: a clear README, relevant topics and a link to the project’s website.
• Niche directories in your own field: search for “[your category] directory”.

App stores, if you have an app

• Your App Store and Google Play page is your app’s most important page: the title, short description and first screenshots decide whether people install.
• Use the words people search for naturally in the title and description, not as a list of keywords.
• Ask happy users for a rating at a good moment, and reply to reviews, especially the critical ones.

Local and business listings

• Google Business Profile is essential for any business that serves customers in a place: shops, clinics, restaurants, agencies. It controls how you appear on Google Maps and in local results.
• Bing Places does the same for Bing.
• Justdial and IndiaMART are widely used in India, for local services and for B2B suppliers respectively.
• Keep your business name, address and phone number identical on every listing.

Social profiles

Profiles on X, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube often appear on the first page of results for a brand name. Claim your name on each even if you rarely post, use the same logo and description, and link back to your site.

Paid placements

Sponsored listings, newsletter sponsorships and ads buy attention quickly. Google’s rules say their links should be marked rel="sponsored", so count them as a source of visitors and visibility, not of SEO links.

TopCrown is one of these: a public leaderboard of websites, apps and profiles where rank is set only by the amount paid. Each listing gets its own page, which can appear when people search for your product’s name, a place on the board and in its category, and a badge for your site that shows your rank. The visits it sends you are counted on your listing.

After you list

• Reply to every comment and review in the first few days.
• Check which listings actually send visitors (your UTM tags tell you) and spend more time there.
• Update your listings when the product changes: an old screenshot costs clicks.
• Link to your best listings and profiles from your own site, so search engines connect them to you.
• For the search side of things, see the SEO checklist for a new website.

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