Amazon cuts sellers' fees again, extends battle against Flipkart on new front

It appears online e-commerce platform Amazon plans to leave no-stone-unturned when it comes to fighting their rival, Flipkart. After fighting the price war, the international major is now fighting against the Indian major on sellers’ front as well.

The Seattle-headquartered platform has slashed its seller fees across 22 categories including furniture, laptop bags and sleeves, home storage, eyewear, innerwear, luggage, wallets, backpacks and watches etc.

Amazon has reduced the referral fee for several fashion products from 20 per cent to 15 per cent.

For categories such as furniture, the fee has been reduced from 14 per cent to 12 per cent.

The fee for luggage has also been reduced to 5.5 per cent from 7 per cent, while the fees for eyewear has been reduced drastically to 8.5 per cent from 16.5 per cent.

The move was an effort to gain an upper hand in the long term, by having a strong presence in local and hyperlocal pockets over Flipkart.

In the recent fee change, it has reduced referral fee across 22 categories. It has lowered fee across various components such as weight handling, pick and pack fee for oversized items.

“We aim to provide sellers the flexibility to reduce their costs of doing business on Amazon and serve the customers better,” said an Amazon spokesperson, in response to a query by The Indian Express.

This is the second time in 2018 when Amazon has slashed its seller fees. In March, it reduced its seller fees for 32 categories. In categories such as daily essentials and apparel, sellers’ fees were slashed by up to 70 per cent.

Experts say that Amazon is looking to invite as many sellers on the platform and increase the number of products. Currently, Amazon has 3 lakh sellers selling 160 million products across 104 categories on its Indian platform.