How to Sell on Amazon India 2026: Step-by-Step Seller Guide
Selling on Amazon India has never been cheaper to start. From 16 March 2026, Amazon expanded zero referral fees to over 12.5 crore products priced under ā¹1,000 across more than 1,800 categories, and a basic seller account still carries no entry fee and no monthly rent.
The opportunity sits on top of serious infrastructure spending. Amazon has committed US$35 billion to India by 2030 across AI, logistics and marketplace operations, and its fulfilment network already reaches virtually every serviceable PIN code in the country.
This guide walks through registration, the 2026 fee structure, fulfilment choices, GST requirements and the first-90-days playbook for a new Amazon India seller.
What you need before registering
Five items cover almost every seller: a GSTIN (GST registration), a PAN, an active bank account in the business's name, a mobile number and e-mail, and a pickup address. Sellers of GST-exempt goods, such as books, can register with PAN alone.
The GSTIN requirement is absolute for taxable goods - e-commerce sellers need GST registration from the first inter-state sale regardless of turnover, a rule explained in IndiaPost's GST guide for e-commerce sellers. Applying via the GST registration process takes about a week and costs nothing.
Registration: step-by-step
Account creation on sellercentral.amazon.in takes most sellers under an hour once documents are ready. Amazon verifies details in stages, and the first listing can be live the same day.
The six steps
Step 1: open sellercentral.amazon.in and click "Start Selling," signing in with a new or existing Amazon account. Step 2: enter the legal business name exactly as it appears on the PAN or GST certificate, and verify mobile and e-mail with OTPs. Step 3: enter the GSTIN (or declare GST-exempt status for categories like books).
Step 4: set the pickup address from which couriers will collect orders. Step 5: choose a shipping method - Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), Easy Ship or Self Ship. Step 6: add bank account details for settlements, complete the digital signature, and list the first products via barcode match or new listing creation.
Amazon India fees in 2026
The March 2026 fee revision is the largest cut in Amazon India's history, reducing total selling fees by up to 70% for low-priced products. Amazon framed the change explicitly around seller economics:
"Amazon announces zero referral fees on over 12.5 crore products, covering items priced under ā¹1,000 across more than 1,800 categories including apparel, shoes, grocery, home, beauty, toys and kitchen." (Amazon India announcement, March 2026.)
Four fee types still apply depending on price point and fulfilment choice. Referral fees on products above ā¹1,000 were cut by 4-9.5 percentage points in high-demand categories and range from 2% to 38% by category, per the official fee schedule; closing fees fell to ā¹20 for products under ā¹300 and ā¹26 for ā¹300-500; weight-handling fees apply on Amazon-shipped orders; and FBA adds storage and pick-pack fees. All fees attract 18% GST.
| Fee | 2026 rate | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Referral fee (under ā¹1,000) | 0% in 1,800+ categories | Most low-priced products |
| Referral fee (above ā¹1,000) | 2-38% by category (cut 4-9.5 pts in key categories) | All sales |
| Closing fee | ā¹20 (under ā¹300); ā¹26 (ā¹300-500) | Per item sold |
| Weight handling | By weight and distance | FBA and Easy Ship orders |
| FBA storage & pick-pack | Per cubic foot/unit; long-term surcharge after 270 days | FBA inventory |
| GST on fees | 18% | All Amazon fees |
As a planning figure, total selling costs typically land between 15% and 25% of the selling price once referral, closing and shipping fees are combined, according to GoNukkad's 2026 cost breakdown - and substantially less for sub-ā¹1,000 products after the March cuts.
A worked profit example
Concrete numbers keep planning honest. Take a kitchen product selling at ā¹799 with a landed cost of ā¹320, fulfilled by FBA. After the March 2026 cuts the referral fee is ā¹0 (sub-ā¹1,000 kitchen category), the closing fee ā¹26, weight handling roughly ā¹65 for a 500 g local-zone shipment, and FBA pick-pack about ā¹20 - around ā¹111 in fees plus ā¹20 GST on them.
That leaves roughly ā¹348 gross profit per unit before advertising and returns. Budgeting 10% of price for ads (ā¹80) and a 5% returns provision (ā¹40) still nets about ā¹228, a 28% net margin - arithmetic that simply did not work for this product before the zero-referral change, when a 15.5% referral fee would have taken another ā¹124.
Choosing a fulfilment method
Fulfilment choice shapes both costs and conversion. FBA inventory earns the Prime badge, and sellers commonly report around three times more sales on Prime-eligible listings, per Skydo's seller fee analysis.
FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon)
The seller ships stock to an Amazon fulfilment centre; Amazon stores, packs, ships and handles returns. Best for fast-moving products with predictable demand. Watch the 270-day long-term storage surcharge on slow stock.
Easy Ship
The seller stores and packs; Amazon's courier collects and delivers. A middle path that keeps inventory control without building courier relationships.
Self Ship
The seller stores, packs and ships through its own couriers. Maximum control and sometimes lower cost, but no Prime badge and full responsibility for delivery performance metrics.
Listings that rank and convert
Amazon search rewards completeness. A listing's title should front-load the primary keyword and key attributes (brand, material, size, count); the backend search-term field takes additional keywords buyers actually type. Six or more images on white backgrounds, an infographic showing dimensions, and a lifestyle shot raise conversion measurably, and the five bullet points should answer the questions buyers otherwise ask in reviews.
Two structural choices matter at creation time. Matching an existing ASIN via barcode puts the seller in competition for that listing's Featured Offer; creating a new ASIN owns the page but must build reviews from zero. And category selection drives the referral fee - misclassified products quietly overpay for months, which is why the fee report deserves a monthly check.
Advertising: building velocity without burning margin
Sponsored Products is the workhorse for new sellers: automatic-targeting campaigns surface the search terms Amazon associates with the product, and the best-converting terms graduate into manual exact-match campaigns. A disciplined launch runs ads at a 15-20% ACoS (advertising cost of sale) for the first month to build sales velocity and reviews, then tightens toward 5-10% as organic rank arrives.
Brand-registered sellers unlock Sponsored Brands (banner placements) and Sponsored Display (retargeting), plus A+ content - the rich product-page modules that lift conversion on premium listings. Brand Registry requires a trademark application, which is itself half-priced for MSME-registered sellers; for any seller building an own label, the trademark-then-registry sequence belongs in the first quarter's plan.
Inventory planning and the festive calendar
Amazon India's demand curve is violently seasonal, and inventory is the lever sellers control. The Great Indian Festival stretch (late September through Diwali) routinely delivers several normal months of volume in six weeks, with secondary peaks at Republic Day, Prime Day and the wedding season. FBA inbound slots tighten before events, so festive stock should reach fulfilment centres four to six weeks ahead.
The planning discipline: track weeks-of-cover per SKU (stock divided by trailing weekly sales), keep 6-8 weeks of cover normally and 10-12 entering events, and respect the 270-day long-term storage line by clearing slow stock through deals rather than letting surcharges eat it. Stockouts during an event do double damage - lost sales now and suppressed organic rank after - which is why experienced sellers treat the September inbound deadline as the year's most important date.
Beyond the marketplace: Amazon's seller programmes
Several programmes extend the basic account. Amazon Global Selling lets Indian sellers list on Amazon's US, UK, UAE and other marketplaces with export handled through Amazon's cross-border logistics - a route that has carried lakhs of Indian sellers into export, with e-commerce exports from India through the programme measured in billions of dollars. Amazon Karigar serves artisans with concessional fees, and Local Shops onboards neighbourhood retailers for same-city delivery.
For manufacturers and resellers, Amazon Business (the B2B marketplace) adds bulk-pricing and GST-invoice demand from companies - often at better margins and lower return rates than consumer orders. Each programme uses the same Seller Central account and catalog, so the marginal effort of enrolling is small once the core operation runs cleanly.
Returns, claims and account suspensions
Returns policy is category-set and customer-friendly, so sellers price it in rather than fight it: fashion runs the highest return rates, hard goods the lowest. FBA returns are processed by Amazon, with reimbursement claims available where items come back damaged or not at all; Easy Ship and Self Ship sellers handle their own reverse logistics through SAFE-T claims for courier-damaged or COD-fraud cases.
Suspensions follow metric breaches or policy flags (counterfeit complaints, review manipulation, mismatched invoices), and reinstatement runs through a written plan of action: root cause, corrective steps, preventive controls. The practical defence is boring discipline - genuine invoices retained for every purchase lot, accurate listings, and dispatch performance watched weekly.
Getting paid
Amazon settles funds to the registered bank account on a rolling 7-day cycle after order delivery, net of fees. The Payments dashboard in Seller Central reconciles every order against referral, closing and shipping deductions - new sellers should reconcile weekly, because category misclassification (and therefore wrong referral fees) is a common, correctable error.
The first 90 days: what separates sellers who scale
Three practices predict early traction. First, listing quality: titles front-loaded with the search keyword, six or more images, bullet points that answer buyer questions, and A+ content where brand-registered. Second, pricing inside the "Featured Offer" (Buy Box) band - the March 2026 fee cuts give sub-ā¹1,000 sellers room to price aggressively. Third, early use of Sponsored Products ads with a 5-10% advertising cost of sale target to build review velocity.
Category research matters before the first purchase order. IndiaPost's analysis of the most profitable Amazon India product categories maps margins by category, and B2B-leaning sellers can compare the marketplace route against selling on IndiaMART.
Compliance and account health
Account health metrics decide whether a seller stays live: order defect rate under 1%, late shipment rate under 4%, and pre-fulfilment cancellation under 2.5%. Amazon enforces these automatically, and suspensions hit fast-growing sellers hardest because volume amplifies any process gap.
GST compliance runs in parallel. Amazon deducts 0.5% TCS (0.25% CGST + 0.25% SGST on intra-state, 0.5% IGST on inter-state) on net sales, which sellers reclaim while filing GSTR-3B; monthly GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B filings remain the seller's responsibility.
Methodology
This guide was compiled in June 2026 from Amazon Seller Central documentation (registration flow and the official fee schedule), Amazon India's March 2026 fee announcement, and seller-economics analyses from GoNukkad, Shiprocket and Skydo. Fee figures reflect the structure effective 16 March 2026; the worked example uses category rates current in June 2026. Category-level referral rates should be confirmed against the live fee schedule before pricing, as Amazon revises them periodically.
Key takeaways
Registration on sellercentral.amazon.in is free and needs only GSTIN, PAN, bank account and a pickup address. Since 16 March 2026, referral fees are zero on 12.5 crore+ products under ā¹1,000, closing fees fell to ā¹20-26 on low-price bands, and total fee savings reach 70%. FBA costs more but the Prime badge typically multiplies sales roughly threefold, and a worked sub-ā¹1,000 example nets ~28% margin after ads and returns. Plan inventory around the festive calendar with 10-12 weeks of cover into events, use Global Selling and Amazon Business to widen demand, run Sponsored Products at launch then tighten ACoS, reconcile payments weekly, and protect account health metrics from day one.
Looking ahead
Amazon's US$35 billion India commitment and the 2026 fee cuts point in the same direction: the marketplace is competing hard for India's small sellers as quick commerce and ONDC widen their alternatives. For sellers, that competition is leverage - lower fees, better tools and faster settlements are likely to keep coming. The sellers positioned to benefit are those who treat Amazon as one channel in a portfolio, with clean GST records and listing assets they can redeploy anywhere.