Amazon India unveiled a sequence of price reductions for retailers on its platform, increasing a programme that eliminates referral charges to cowl greater than 12.5 crore merchandise. The transfer follows an analogous initiative by rival Flipkart, which waived vendor commissions on items beneath Rs 1,000 late final yr. This follows a yr of great monetary enchancment for the corporate’s market operator and ongoing investments in AI to compete with rising rivals.
The revised price construction, which takes impact on March 16, 2026, applies to merchandise priced beneath Rs 1,000 throughout greater than 1,800 classes. Eligible merchandise contains attire, electronics, homeware, pet equipment, and toys. This marks a greater than tenfold enlargement from the 1.2 crore merchandise eligible for zero referral charges in 2025. Based on the corporate, sellers might cut back their price bills by as much as 70% beneath the brand new phrases.
The preliminary price elimination in 2025 focused gadgets priced beneath Rs 300 throughout 135 classes. That prior discount, which took impact in April 2025, got here at a time when incumbent ecommerce platforms have been specializing in counter competitors from zero-commission platforms like Meesho and the rising market share of fast commerce channels.
“Publish the sub-300 change, we have now seen near a 50% development within the month-to-month run fee of latest sellers approaching board to Amazon,” Amit Nanda, Director, Promoting Associate Providers, Amazon India shared with YourStory.
In November 2025, Flipkart prolonged its personal zero-commission providing to merchandise priced beneath Rs 1,000, which it acknowledged would lower the price of doing enterprise by about 30% for sellers in that bracket. Moreover, Flipkart transitioned its hyper-value platform, Shopsy, to a totally zero-commission mannequin to focus on shoppers in smaller cities.
Along with slicing referral charges, Amazon can be adjusting its logistics prices by decreasing Straightforward Ship charges by over 20% for gadgets priced beneath Rs 300. The Straightforward Ship service permits retailers to keep up stock at their very own services whereas Amazon manages order pickup and supply. Additional, sellers dispatching a number of gadgets in a single package deal will obtain a reduction exceeding 90% on promoting charges for the second unit.
The corporate indicated that the price revisions are supposed to enhance operational effectivity and profitability for small companies and entrepreneurs, notably these situated in Tier II and III cities.
The most recent price restructuring comes after Amazon reported an 89% narrowing of its web loss to Rs 374.3 crore for the fiscal yr ended March 31, 2025. Throughout that very same interval, {the marketplace} operator’s income climbed 19% year-on-year to Rs 30,139 crore.
“If a vendor saves 70% and is now paying 30 rupees as an alternative of 100, they select the place to take a position that 70 rupees. They may put money into higher product high quality, packaging, promoting, or promotions. This results in additional scale benefits, making the Amazon flywheel work higher,” added Nanda.
As main ecommerce platforms recalibrate insurance policies to decrease fundamental promoting prices, they’re more and more providing superior technological and monetary companies to assist sellers and generate different income.
To additional appeal to small companies, Amazon is increasing its technological choices alongside its price cuts. In December 2025, the corporate acknowledged it’ll equip 15 million enterprises with synthetic intelligence instruments by 2030, rolling out capabilities similar to automated itemizing creation, advert era, and superior vendor analytics inside its Vendor Central platform.
Equally, Flipkart has built-in an AI-led logistics community that includes automated sorting and machine-learning-based demand forecasting to enhance supply reliability, and lately launched an “Promote Now, Pay Later” program to permit sellers to run campaigns with out upfront funds.
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