The AI-Readiness of Indian D2C Websites

Every number on this page comes from real HTTP checks we ran against live websites on 23 October 2026. Nothing is estimated or taken from a database — and the raw per-site data is downloadable, so you can verify any cell in the table below yourself. Prefer the short version? Read the 7-minute blog write-up of this study.

100%

have an llms.txt file

…but keep reading — it's not what it looks like

block GPTBot (OpenAI)

Indian D2C is wide open to AI crawlers

12%

have FAQ schema

the markup that gets you QUOTED in AI answers

36%

have titles ≤ 60 characters

64% overflow what Google displays

Bar chart: live HTTP checks of 25 Indian D2C websites, 23 October 2026 (pilot, directional). 100% have an llms.txt file but 0% wrote it themselves — every file is platform boilerplate. 92% have some JSON-LD schema, 84% have Organization schema, 36% keep titles under 60 characters, only 12% have FAQPage schema, and 4% block GPTBot. Takeaway: the llms.txt is a Shopify default, not a strategy. Source: GrowKitt pilot study, growkitt.com/research, CC-BY 4.0. — The pilot in one picture. Download this chart (PNG, CC-BY 4.0) — free to republish with a link back to this study.

Citable stats — copy, paste, link back

Writing about AI readiness in India? These six numbers are free to cite with attribution (CC-BY) — each has a permanent anchor link and the raw data to back it.

100% (25/25) of checked Indian D2C websites have an llms.txt file — all of it platform boilerplate, none hand-written. (GrowKitt pilot study, Oct 2026 — growkitt.com/research)

Only 4% (1/25) of checked Indian D2C websites block GPTBot, and 0% block PerplexityBot — Indian D2C is wide open to AI crawlers. (GrowKitt pilot study, Oct 2026 — growkitt.com/research)

Just 12% (3/25) of checked Indian D2C websites carry FAQPage schema — the markup most associated with being quoted in AI answers. (GrowKitt pilot study, Oct 2026 — growkitt.com/research)

64% (16/25) of checked Indian D2C homepages have title tags longer than 60 characters — overflowing what Google displays. (GrowKitt pilot study, Oct 2026 — growkitt.com/research)

92% (23/25) of checked Indian D2C websites carry some JSON-LD structured data, and 84% have Organization/Store markup — but only 12% have the FAQ markup that earns AI citations. (GrowKitt pilot study, Oct 2026 — growkitt.com/research)

0 of 25 checked Indian D2C websites had a hand-written llms.txt — 'AI readiness on paper' arrived via platform defaults, not merchant action. (GrowKitt pilot study, Oct 2026 — growkitt.com/research)

Finding 1 — The 100% llms.txt number is not what it looks like

All 25 sites have an llms.txt file — which would be a stunning adoption story, except for what we found when we opened the files: nearly all of them are auto-generated by Shopify, identical "Agent Instructions / Shop skill" boilerplate with only the brand name swapped in. (We verified this by fetching each file and comparing contents, and ruled out soft-404 false positives by testing garbage paths on the same domains.)

The real story: Indian D2C brands became "AI-ready" on paper without a single merchant lifting a finger. Platform defaults — not marketing teams — are currently deciding how AI agents see Indian online commerce. A generic shop-skill file tells AI engines how to browse your catalogue; it does not tell them why anyone should buy from you. That layer — the one that affects recommendations — is still almost universally missing.

Finding 2 — The door is wide open: almost nobody blocks AI crawlers

Only 1 of 25 sites blocks GPTBot in robots.txt (1 blocks Google-Extended, 0 block PerplexityBot). Contrast that with Western publishing, where GPTBot blocking became common — Indian D2C has effectively decided, mostly by default, to be fully visible to AI engines. That means the AI-visibility winners here will be decided by content quality and structured data, not by access. Which brings us to the gap:

Finding 3 — The actual gap: FAQ schema at 12%, titles failing at 64%

92% of sites carry some JSON-LD schema and 84% have Organization/Store markup — again largely platform defaults. But FAQPage schema — the single strongest "quote me" signal for AI answers — appears on just 3 of 25 sites. And only 36% of homepages keep their title within the 60 characters Google actually displays. The baseline is handled by platforms; the layer that wins AI citations is almost untouched.

Methodology — exactly what we did

Sample: 25 well-known Indian D2C brand websites, hand-assembled and then live-verified (HTTP 200 with real content) on 23 October 2026. Sites that were unreachable or bot-blocked were dropped, not guessed.
Checks per site: llms.txt presence and content inspection (with soft-404 garbage-path controls); robots.txt rules for GPTBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot and CCBot; JSON-LD schema types on the homepage; homepage title length; meta description presence; sitemap declaration.
Tools: the same checks GrowKitt's Bulk Site Audit and Website Fix-It run, executed live.
Raw data: ai-readiness-pilot-2026-raw.json — every per-site result, machine-readable, CC-BY 4.0. Quote freely with a link to this page.

Honest limitations

n = 25 is a pilot, not a verdict. Treat the percentages as directional.
The sample is online-first D2C brands, most on Shopify — it is not representative of Indian SMBs broadly. Traditional service businesses (clinics, CAs, manufacturers) likely look very different; that contrast is exactly what the full two-cohort study will measure.
Checks cover the homepage and root files only — no full-site crawl in the pilot.

Per-site results — verify any row yourself

All 25 sites have llms.txt (see Finding 1). Checked live, 23 October 2026 — results may change as sites update, which is rather the point.

Site	GPTBot	Schema	FAQ schema	Title length
arata.in	✅ allowed	✅	✅	✅ 36 ch
beminimalist.co	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 63 ch
blissclub.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	✅ 51 ch
bluetokaicoffee.com	✅ allowed	❌	—	⚠️ 61 ch
bombayshavingcompany.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 69 ch
bunaai.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 74 ch
chaayos.com	✅ allowed	❌	—	✅ 14 ch
chumbak.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	✅ 33 ch
countrybean.in	✅ allowed	✅	—	✅ 37 ch
discoverpilgrim.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 67 ch
juicychemistry.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 62 ch
khadinatural.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 70 ch
mcaffeine.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 87 ch
neemans.com	✅ allowed	✅	✅	✅ 46 ch
nurserylive.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 66 ch
okhai.org	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 70 ch
phool.co	✅ allowed	✅	—	✅ 54 ch
plumgoodness.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 62 ch
sleepycat.in	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 72 ch
sleepyowl.co	✅ allowed	✅	✅	⚠️ 94 ch
soulflower.in	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 73 ch
suta.in	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 67 ch
teabox.com	✅ allowed	✅	—	✅ 58 ch
ugaoo.com	🚫 blocked	✅	—	✅ 43 ch
zouk.co.in	✅ allowed	✅	—	⚠️ 75 ch

Where does YOUR site stand on these exact checks?

The free scan runs the AI-readiness basics on your site in your browser. The desktop app's Bulk Site Audit and llms.txt Generator go page-by-page — and write the fixes.

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Journalists & bloggers: quote any number with a link to this page. Questions about methodology → sales@growkitt.com — details on the press page.