Recognising Excellence in eCommerce Innovation
Celebrating excellence, innovation, and leadership across India's commerce ecosystem.
You can nominate your business in multiple categories
Sub-tracks: Ecommerce Marketplaces & Quickcommerce - each judged separately within every category, since the two operate on very different economics and metrics.
Platform of the Year
This category recognizes the ecommerce marketplace or quick commerce platform that has delivered outstanding all-round performance over the past year - spanning scale, revenue growth, customer trust, operational excellence, and market leadership. It celebrates the platform that has set the benchmark for what success looks like in its segment, balancing growth with sustainable, customer-first operations.
Best Customer Experience
This award honors the platform that has gone furthest in making the shopping journey seamless, intuitive, and enjoyable for its customers. Judging considers the full funnel - product discovery, search and browse experience, checkout and payments, delivery experience, and post-purchase support - recognizing platforms that have used design, technology, and service to reduce friction and build customer loyalty.
Best Supply Chain & Fulfillment Innovation
This category recognizes breakthrough innovation in the backend systems that power ecommerce - warehousing, inventory management, dark stores/micro-fulfillment, and last-mile delivery. It celebrates platforms that have found smarter, faster, or more cost-efficient ways to move products from source to doorstep, raising the bar for reliability and speed in their segment.
Best Use of AI & Personalization
This award celebrates platforms using artificial intelligence and data-driven personalization to create smarter, more relevant customer experiences - whether through product recommendations, dynamic pricing, demand forecasting, visual/voice search, or hyper-personalized marketing. It recognizes technology that meaningfully improves both business outcomes and the customer's shopping experience.
Fastest Growing Platform of the Year
This category honors the platform with the most exceptional growth trajectory over the last 12 months - measured through metrics like user acquisition, order volume, revenue growth, or geographic/category expansion. It spotlights the rising stars reshaping the competitive landscape at pace.
Most Innovative Category/Product Launch
This award recognizes a standout new product line, category, or vertical launched by a platform in the last year - one that opened up a new market opportunity, addressed an unmet customer need, or set a new innovation benchmark within ecommerce or quick commerce.
D2C Brand of the Year
This category recognizes the digital native brand that has delivered outstanding all-round performance over the past year - spanning revenue growth, brand equity, customer loyalty, and category leadership. It celebrates the brand that has set the benchmark for what success looks like in the D2C space, balancing aggressive growth with a strong, differentiated brand identity and sustainable business fundamentals.
Best D2C Brand Launch
This award honors a brand launched in the past 12–18 months that has achieved standout early traction - strong product-market fit, rapid customer adoption, and meaningful brand recall - in a short span of time. It recognizes the ability to enter a crowded market and carve out a distinct identity quickly, rather than sheer scale.
Best Performance Marketing & Customer Acquisition Strategy
This category celebrates a brand's data-driven approach to acquiring customers efficiently and sustainably - across performance marketing, influencer and creator partnerships, SEO, and paid social. Judging looks beyond top-line growth to the underlying unit economics - customer acquisition cost (CAC) versus lifetime value (LTV) - recognizing brands that scale acquisition without burning capital unsustainably.
Best Customer Retention & Loyalty Program
This award recognizes brands that have moved beyond one-time acquisition to build genuine repeat purchase behavior. It honors innovative approaches to retention - subscription models, loyalty and rewards programs, community-building, or personalized re-engagement strategies - that turn first-time buyers into long-term customers and advocates.
Best Founder-Led Brand Story
This category honors a brand where founder vision, voice, and storytelling have been central to building an authentic and differentiated identity. It recognizes founders who have used their personal story, values, or point of view to create a brand that customers connect with emotionally - not just transactionally.
Most Innovative D2C Product Launch
This award celebrates a standout new product or product line that addressed an unmet customer need, disrupted category conventions, or set a new benchmark for innovation within the D2C space. It recognizes bold product thinking - not just marketing execution - as the driver of category disruption.
Best Social Commerce Brand
This category recognizes a brand that has built a significant share of its business through social platforms - Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp - using content, creators, and native selling formats like in-app checkout, live commerce, and DM-based ordering to drive discovery and conversion. It celebrates brands that have mastered social platforms as a primary sales channel, not just a marketing touchpoint, reflecting how a large and growing share of D2C commerce in India now happens natively within social apps.
Omnichannel Brand of the Year
This category recognizes the brand that has delivered outstanding all-round performance by successfully integrating its online and offline channels - driving growth, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency across both. It celebrates the brand that best exemplifies what "true omnichannel" looks like in execution, not just intent.
Best Online-to-Offline (O2O) Integration
This award honors a brand that has seamlessly connected its digital and physical presence - enabling customers to discover or purchase online and experience or collect offline (or vice versa) without friction. Judging looks at how well the brand removes the "seams" between channels so the customer experiences one continuous journey, not two disconnected ones.
Best Unified Commerce Technology Implementation
This category celebrates a brand's use of technology to create a single operational backbone across channels - unified inventory visibility, integrated POS-ecommerce systems, and a single customer view regardless of where they shop. It recognizes the technology and systems investment that makes omnichannel possible behind the scenes, not just the customer-facing experience.
Best In-Store Digital Experience
This award recognizes innovative use of digital tools within physical retail spaces - smart fitting rooms, in-store kiosks, AR/VR try-ons, mobile POS, or app-linked in-store journeys. It honors brands that are using technology to make the physical store experience richer, faster, or more personalized, rather than treating stores as purely legacy infrastructure.
Best Click-and-Collect / Ship-from-Store Execution
This category honors a brand that has excelled at turning its store network into a fulfillment asset - enabling fast, reliable click-and-collect, ship-from-store, or hyperlocal delivery models. It recognizes operational excellence in blending the convenience of online ordering with the speed and reach advantage of a physical footprint.
Best Omnichannel Customer Loyalty Program
This award recognizes a loyalty or rewards program that works consistently across online and offline touchpoints - recognizing and rewarding customers no matter where they shop. It celebrates brands that have built a truly unified view of customer value and engagement, rather than running separate, disconnected loyalty schemes for each channel.
Nomination forms for the Images Ecommerce Awards 2026 can be filled online on the official website or by approaching the Awards Secretariat.
Assessment Period: April 1, 2025 – March 31, 2026
Eligible applicants must apply online and submit nomination details along with supporting materials.
The Internet eCommerce Awards Jury and the organizers reserve the right to finalize award categories, rename titles, and reassign nominations to the most appropriate categories where necessary.
Categories receiving fewer than three valid entries may be considered for Special Jury Recognition/Excellence Awards.
Jury panel members are subject to change.
Award winners will be announced during the Images Ecommerce Awards 2026Â ceremony on 08 September 2026 at Hotel Conrad Bengaluru.
- Award categories and titles are subject to change without prior notice.
- Submission of an entry form does not guarantee nomination. Nominations will be shortlisted based on performance data provided in the entry form.
- There are three broad categories open for nominations:
- ) Pureplay Ecommerce
- ) Digital Native Brands (D2C)
- ) Omnichannel Brands
Within each of these, sub-categories will be evaluated and awarded individually, with trophies conferred by the jury.
Please note:
- Final evaluation will be conducted by the Internet eCommerce Awards Grand Jury comprising industry experts, analysts, and thought leaders. Nominations should be submitted carefully with all required details on the Online Entry Form Portal in the specified format (Doc, Excel sheets, PPTs, Video).
- Jury deliberations are confidential, and the final decision on winners, runners-up, and special recognitions rests with the Jury Chairperson.
- Any attempt to influence the selection process or directly approach Jury members may lead to disqualification.
- Complete and accurate information in the entry form is mandatory. Missing or incomplete details will negatively impact jury evaluations.
- By participating, all nominees confirm their agreement to:
A. Use the authorized award title and description in all related communication.
B. Use only the official Internet eCommerce Awards logo, ribbon, and trophy visuals as provided by IMAGES Group.
- Entries with misleading or incorrect information will be disqualified.
- All nominees confirm the truthfulness and accuracy of submitted information and consent to its use for internal research and industry insights, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
- Every nomination form must be attested by a senior authority – Director / CEO / Proprietor.
- The Jury and organizers reserve the right to finalize categories, rename or club them, and shift nominations to better-suited categories if required.
- A minimum of three valid entries per category is required. If not met, the category may be dropped without notice, though valid entries may still be considered for special recognition or reassigned to a similar category.
Previous Awardees
For further enquiries please contact:
Priti Gupta, +91 8826415472, pritigupta@irisretail.com