How to sell on Amazon India

How to sell on Amazon India, in short: register a Seller Central account in your business’s name, decide who stores and ships each order, list products that pass Amazon’s checks, and run the account every day so its health holds.

This guide follows the order the work happens in. Amazon revises its fees, category rules and policies through the year, so treat every rule here as something to confirm in Seller Central before you act on it.

Is Amazon the right place to start?

Amazon suits products that shoppers search for by name and compare on price, ratings and delivery date. It suits less well a product that needs explaining before anyone wants it, or one whose margin cannot carry commission, shipping fees and returns.

Signs that Amazon should come first:

• Shoppers already type your product type into a search box, such as “cotton bedsheet double” or “steel water bottle”.
• You can hold stock and ship within the handling time you promise, every working day.
• Your price still leaves a margin after fees, returns and some advertising.
• You can supply the documents your category asks for, from GST registration to product certificates.

If your product needs a story more than a search box, read our comparison of marketplace vs D2C before you register anywhere.

What documents do you need before registering?

Keep a PAN, a GSTIN for most categories, a bank account in the business’s name, and an email address and mobile number reserved for the account. Names and addresses should match across all of them, because Amazon checks them against each other.

Product details belong on the same list: the MRP, HSN code and GST rate for each product, and the declarations printed on its pack. Our guide to Legal Metrology rules for online sellers sets out what those declarations are.

How do you register on Seller Central?

Registration is quick when the documents are ready, and slow when any name or address disagrees. The steps, as they stood at the time of writing:

1. Create the account on Amazon’s seller registration page, using the email and mobile number the business will keep.
2. Enter the business details exactly as they appear on your PAN and GST registration: legal name, constitution and address.
3. Add your GSTIN and PAN, which Amazon checks against government records.
4. Add the bank account that will receive payouts, in the same name.
5. Name your store, the display name shoppers see beside your offers.
6. Complete identity verification with the documents Amazon asks for.
7. Set shipping and tax settings, including your handling time and, if you ship yourself, the pickup address.
8. Check category approvals before you list, since some categories need documents or approval first.

Most delays come from small mismatches: a trade name on the bank account and a legal name on the GST certificate, or an old address on one document. Correct the documents first rather than explaining the difference to support.

Who stores, packs and ships your orders?

Either your team does, or Amazon does through Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA). Amazon offers three main routes, and the choice decides your fees, your delivery promise and how much of each day your team spends packing.

FBA makes products eligible for Prime delivery, and charges for storage and fulfilment in return. You still prepare, label and send stock in, plan replenishment, and pay to have unsold stock returned. Easy Ship and self-ship leave stock, packing and handover with you.

Whichever route you choose, storage, packing and shipping stay with you or with Amazon’s programme. We do none of it: we run the account side of the same orders, from stock counts in the panel to claims for units lost in Amazon’s care.

How do you list your first product?

Search Amazon’s catalogue first. If the product is already listed, you add your offer to that listing; if it is not, you create a new one, with its own ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), in the category’s format.

Adding an offer to an existing listing is quick, but you share the page with other sellers and compete for the Buy Box, the offer Amazon shows by default. Creating a listing takes longer and gives you more say over what the page shows.

A new listing needs:

• a product barcode (GTIN), or an exemption from Amazon where your own brand has none;
• a title in the category’s format, usually brand, product type, key feature, size and colour;
• bullet points that answer the questions that stop a purchase, and a description;
• images, with the main image on the plain white background Amazon requires;
• every required attribute, and the optional ones shoppers filter by;
• variations, so sizes and colours sit under one parent listing;
• compliance fields: Legal Metrology declarations, country of origin, HSN code and any certificate your category needs.

With a registered trademark, or in some cases an application, you can enrol in Amazon Brand Registry. It gives you more control over listing content and opens A+ content, the image-and-text section below the listing, and brand-only ad formats.

Our product listing services build these records once and adapt them to each marketplace, which matters as soon as Amazon is not your only channel.

What does selling on Amazon India cost?

Selling on Amazon costs a referral fee on each sale that varies by category and price, a closing fee, and shipping fees by weight and distance, plus storage and fulfilment fees under FBA.

At the time of writing, the referral fee is zero on items priced up to ₹ 1,000 in many categories. Advertising and returns come in addition.

• Referral fee: Amazon’s commission, a share of the selling price set by category.
• Closing fee: a fixed charge per item, which weighs heavily on low-priced products.
• Shipping fees: set by weight, dimensions and distance, so a wrong weight on the listing costs you on every order.
• FBA fees: fulfilment, storage, and removal of stock you take back.
• Advertising: sponsored ads, which most new listings need.
• Returns and RTO: shipping both ways, and products that come back unsaleable. RTO, return to origin, is an order that never reaches the buyer.

Amazon charges GST on its fees, usually claimable as input tax credit. Each payout also arrives short of TCS (tax collected at source under GST) and TDS under income tax; both are credits, not costs, but they hold up cash.

Before you list, work out what reaches you per unit: the selling price, less the GST inside it, less fees, shipping, expected returns and the ad cost of winning each order, less the landed cost of the product.

Seller Central has a fee calculator to start from. How GST, TCS and input tax credit work for a marketplace seller is covered in our guide to GST for online sellers.

How do you win the first orders?

With a complete listing, a price that competes after fees, stock that does not run out, and sponsored ads from the first day. A listing with no sales and no reviews rarely ranks on its own.

• Sponsored Products are open to most sellers and appear in search results. Start with automatic campaigns to learn which searches convert, then move those terms into manual campaigns with their own bids.
• Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display open up with Brand Registry.
• Coupons and deals help a new listing stand out, but work out what each leaves you after fees before you submit it.
• Reviews come from buyers. Use Amazon’s own review request in Seller Central, and never pay, reward or swap for reviews: it breaks Amazon’s rules and puts the account at risk.

Judge ads against your margin, not against sales. ACoS, advertising cost of sales, is ad spend divided by the sales the ads are credited with; our article on ROAS vs ACoS explains how to set a break-even figure.

Prime Day and the Great Indian Festival need deals and stock submitted weeks ahead; see our guide to festive sale planning. Sponsored ads on the marketplaces are part of our Google Ads and Meta Ads management.

What gets accounts suspended or listings suppressed?

Accounts are suspended for risks to buyers: poor order metrics, products reported as inauthentic or unsafe, intellectual property complaints, manipulated reviews, or a second account Amazon did not approve. Listings are suppressed for narrower faults in the listing itself.

The account-level risks

• Order metrics. Amazon scores every seller on order defects, which include negative feedback and A-to-z claims, on cancellations before dispatch and on late dispatch. Set a handling time you can meet in your busiest week, and keep stock counts honest.
• Authenticity complaints. Keep supplier invoices for everything you sell. When a buyer reports a product as fake or used, Amazon may ask for them.
• Intellectual property. Using another brand’s name, logo, images or listing content draws intellectual property complaints, and repeated complaints can close the account.
• Reviews. Paid, rewarded or swapped reviews, or reviews from accounts linked to you.
• Non-compliant products. Toys without BIS certification and the ISI mark, products in categories covered by a BIS quality control order without the required certification, or packs missing Legal Metrology declarations.
• Pricing. Amazon can remove offers it considers priced unfairly, including prices set well above recent levels.

The listing-level faults

A suppressed listing stays in your catalogue but cannot be found or bought. The usual causes are a missing required attribute, a main image that breaks the rules, a price that trips Amazon’s checks, or an empty compliance field. Seller Central names the reason.

Fix the cause in your product record as well as in the panel, or the next bulk upload will bring the fault back.

If the account is suspended

Read the notice, find the cause in your own records, fix it, and send a plan of action: what went wrong, what you have changed, and what stops it happening again. Answer within the time the notice gives, with evidence.

Reinstatement is Amazon’s decision, and nobody can promise it. What you control is a response that is specific and sent while it still counts.

Amazon lends you its shoppers. Your order metrics decide how long the loan lasts.

When and how does Amazon pay you?

Amazon pays on a settlement cycle, net of its fees, refunds and deductions, with TCS and TDS taken out before the money reaches your bank. It can also hold back part of a payout as a reserve against returns and claims.

Each settlement report lists every order, refund, fee and deduction behind the payout. Download it, match every line to an order or a refund, check each fee against the current rate for its category, and raise anything short or unexplained as a ticket.

Small errors add up: a fee charged at the wrong weight, a refund for a return that never came back, a reimbursement approved but not paid. Claims have time limits, so a reconciliation done months later recovers less.

Send your accountant a monthly summary of TCS and TDS, so both can be matched against what Amazon reports and claimed as credits.

When should you get help with Amazon?

When the account takes more hours than anyone on your team has, when settlements go unchecked for months, or when a health warning arrives and nobody owns it. Those are signs the account needs a person, inside or outside the business.

Whoever you bring in, keep the owner login, the registered email and mobile number, the bank details and the Brand Registry in your own name. Anyone else works through user permissions, which Seller Central lets you set by area.

We are an operator, not an agency: we run brands of our own as well, so we work from the seller’s side. Through our marketplace account management services we run listings, pricing, stock, returns, claims, settlements and account health.

Packing and shipping stay with you or with FBA. Tell us what you sell and where the account stands, and we will reply with what we would fix first.

The terms used here, from RTO to TCS, are defined in plain English in our ecommerce glossary.