Amazon India to waive 50% fee for new sellers in festive season

Amazon (Image Courtesy: Reuters)

With e-commerce companies likely to log in sluggish sales growth this festive season because of inflation, Amazon has lined up a 50 percent waiver in selling fee for new sellers.

The halved fee is applicable for sellers who get on the platform between August 28 and October 26, and they get the waiver for a period of 90 days.

This is one of the fees paid by sellers to sell their products on Amazon, and is calculated as a percentage of the total sales price that is paid by the buyer.

The festive season in the latter half of the year is usually when e-commerce companies see the most shopping activity. This period usually sees the biggest sales by Amazon and Flipkart as well.

Amazon India’s Director of Fulfillment Channels Vivek Somareddy said in a statement that the platform has over one million sellers who will be selling products during the festive season.

Amazon said that ahead of its Great Indian Festival, it has been scaling up infrastructure, and has over 60 Fulfilment Centers and 19 sortation centres across states.

A Redseer Consulting report last week had said that e-commerce sales during the festive season will grow 28 percent and hit $11.8 billion.

Sanjay Kothari, an associate partner at Redseer, had earlier said that 70 percent of this year’s sales will be driven by mobile and electronic items, but the average order value is likely to drop. It is expected that the sale will be driven by smaller towns and cities, which is a group that purchases lower-price items.

Moneycontrol had earlier reported that festive season sale growth is expected to be muted this year due to inflation and offline shopping resuming.