Amazon India has cut the selling fee for new vendors by 50 per cent as it lures them away from competitors ahead of a festive season battle.

The e-commerce firm’s annual festive season sale — Great Indian Festival — kicks off on September 23. The mega event sees a spike in big-ticket purchases in the country.

Amazon India competes with Walmart-owned Flipkart which is also coming out with the 9th edition of its Big Billion Days sale.

Flipkart has claimed that the event will be bigger and better with “lakhs of sellers and thousands of brands’’.

In a press statement, Amazon.in announced that all new sellers registering on the platform between August 28 and October 26 and launching within 90 days from the date of registration will be eligible to avail of a 50 per cent waiver on selling fee across all categories.

This is one of the fees that all sellers pay for selling their products on the marketplace and is calculated as a percentage of the total sales price that is paid by the buyer.

“This festive season our focus continues to be on sellers potentially maximising their success while endeavouring to provide our customers unmatched value and the convenience of shopping from anywhere, anytime. We have over a million sellers from India who will have the opportunity to showcase their products to customers across the country during the festive season,’’ said Vivek Somareddy, director fulfilment channels at Amazon India.

Amazon India has been investing in scaling up infrastructure. It has over 60 fulfilment centres, sortation centres across 19 states and over 1,850 partner stations that are gearing up for the festive season.

Festive sales

According to a study by Redseer Strategy Consultants, online festive sales this year are expected to grow 28 per cent over the last festive season to reach $11.8 billion.

In the first week itself, sales are estimated to reach $5.9 billion, a 28 per cent rise over last year’s number of $4.8 billion.

The Redseer report further states that compared with the pre-pandemic sale in 2018, it is expected there will be a threetime growth in gross merchandise value of online festive sales this year.

With inputs from Calcutta Bureau