Aonla is a well-known fruit of medicinal and dietary importance. Nevertheless, it has a short shelf life which is a major constraint in its utilization. In this work, 1% carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) coating was applied on ‘Banarsi’ aonla and fruit were stored for 10 d at 20 ± 1 ºC. The results exhibited that CMC-coated fruit had lower physiological weight loss, disease incidence, relative electrolyte leakage, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), malondialdehyde (MDA) and superoxide anion content. The coated aonla exhibited higher L* and lower b* and a* along with markedly lower chlorophyllase (Chl-Phy) and chlorophyll (Chl) degrading peroxidase (Chl-PD) which thereby resulted in higher total Chl content preservation. The CMC coated aonla fruit showed higher superoxide dismutase (SOD), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), peroxidase (POD) and catalase (CAT) along with higher ascorbate-glutathione (ASA-GSH) cycle related attributes. In addition, coated fruit exhibited higher total phenolic and total flavonoid contents along with higher phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) and reduced polyphenol oxidase (PPO) enzyme activities. On the other hand, juice pH, total soluble solids (TSS) and ripening index (RI) of coated fruit were considerably lower along with substantially higher titratable acidity (TA) content. Therefore, 1% CMC coating could be applied as an appropriate edible layer over aonla fruit to conserve their quality when stored at ambient conditions.