How to sell on Amazon India in 2026: the full guide.
Registration, the FBA-versus-Easy-Ship choice that shapes your economics, the fee stack that decides your real payout, and the returns reality. A plain walk-through for early-stage sellers — and how Robnu runs Amazon for you once you are live.
- You need a GSTIN, PAN, a business bank account, and one product to register through Seller Central.
- The big early decision is fulfilment: FBA (Amazon warehouses and ships) versus Easy Ship (you pack, Amazon delivers).
- Amazon earns through a per-order stack: referral fee, closing fee, and shipping or fulfilment fees, plus GST.
- Returns cost margin and reverse logistics — and some return charges are wrong often enough to check and claim.
- Amazon is live for Robnu — it runs order processing, ads, returns, invoices, and reconciliation for you.
Amazon is often the largest single channel an Indian seller runs, and the decisions you make at the start — fulfilment model, category, pricing — shape your economics for a long time. This guide takes you from a blank account to a live catalogue with clear eyes on what the platform charges and where the money quietly leaks.
Selling on Amazon India is straightforward to start and easy to get wrong in ways that cost you for months — a fulfilment model that does not fit your margins, a category that quietly overcharges, a return rate you never measure. This guide walks the setup in order, explains the fee stack that decides your real payout, and is honest about the returns reality that so many guides skip.
Step one: registration and documents
To open an Amazon India seller account you need a GSTIN for taxable goods, a PAN in the business name, a matching bank account, and at least one product to list. Amazon verifies the GST and bank details during onboarding through Seller Central, so any mismatch will stall you — fix those first. A narrow set of categories, such as certain books, can be sold without GST, but for the vast majority of physical goods a valid GSTIN is mandatory before listings go live. Register at the official Amazon Seller Central and get your GSTIN from the GST portal if you do not already have one.
Step two: FBA versus Easy Ship — the choice that shapes everything
The single most consequential early decision on Amazon is how you fulfil orders. With FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon), you send stock to Amazon’s warehouse and Amazon picks, packs, ships, and handles returns — you get hands-off logistics and Prime eligibility in exchange for storage and fulfilment fees. With Easy Ship, you store and pack orders yourself, and Amazon’s logistics picks up from your location and delivers. FBA trades fees for convenience and reach; Easy Ship trades effort for lower fees.
There is no universally right answer — it turns on your volume, margins, and how hands-on you can be. Many sellers start with Easy Ship to keep fees low while they find their footing, then move fast-moving, Prime-worthy items to FBA once the maths supports it. The important thing is to decide deliberately, modelling the fees for each model against your actual products, rather than defaulting into one. Our Amazon order management overview goes deeper on running both models cleanly.
Step three: the fee stack that decides your real payout
Amazon earns on each sale through a stack of deductions. The referral fee is a category-set percentage of the sale — the biggest line, and the reason your category choice matters. The closing fee is a per-order charge. Then come shipping or fulfilment fees, which depend entirely on whether you are on FBA or Easy Ship, with GST layered on top. Your net payout is the sale value minus this whole stack.
The lesson is the same one every marketplace teaches: a product that looks profitable at the shelf price can lose money once the stack is applied, especially on low-value or heavy items. Model the full deduction before you set a price. And read every settlement afterwards, because the shipping and fulfilment lines are where errors hide — a weight logged higher than reality, a duplicate charge, a return billed on a parcel that never came back. See our Amazon invoicing guide for the document side and payment reconciliation for the money side.
Step four: returns, and the margin they quietly take
Returns work differently depending on your fulfilment model — under FBA Amazon handles the return leg, under Easy Ship the parcel comes back to you — but the economics rhyme with every marketplace. A return means lost margin and reverse logistics, and some return charges are simply wrong: a mismatched weight, a duplicate, or a parcel billed but never received. Those are recoverable if you reconcile and claim, exactly as our RTO recovery guide describes. The discipline is twofold: reduce returns with accurate listings and honest sizing, and make sure every return charge that does land is correct.
Step five: running it all without burning out
Once you are live, Amazon becomes a daily operation: accepting orders, printing labels, packing, syncing inventory, managing ads, generating invoices, handling returns, and reconciling settlements. Each task is simple; together, done by hand, they eat a founder’s entire day and leave errors in the gaps. This is the real challenge of selling on Amazon — not getting started, but sustaining the operation without it consuming you. It is why an operations system exists, and it is the subject of the final section below. The same pattern applies if you also sell on Meesho.
Sources & further reading
Fee percentages, fulfilment options, and category rules change over time and vary by category. Always confirm against the official Amazon and government sources before you price:
FBA or Easy Ship, decided deliberately
The fulfilment model shapes your fees, your effort, and your reach. Neither is universally right — the answer is whichever your margins support.
- FBA. Amazon warehouses, ships, and handles returns. Prime eligibility and hands-off logistics, in exchange for storage and fulfilment fees.
- Easy Ship. You store and pack; Amazon picks up and delivers. Lower fees, more effort, more control at your location.
- A common path. Start on Easy Ship, move fast-moving Prime-worthy items to FBA once the numbers justify it.
- The rule. Model both per product with real weights and volumes before committing. Do not default in.
Run either model cleanly with Amazon order management.
From blank account to live catalogue
Four steps, in order — each one shaping the economics of everything that follows.
Register & verify
GSTIN, PAN, and a matching business bank account through Seller Central. Fix any name or address mismatch first, because verification checks these against government records.
Choose fulfilment
FBA or Easy Ship — the decision that shapes your fees, effort, and reach. Model both per product before you commit rather than defaulting into one.
Model the fees
Referral fee, closing fee, and shipping or fulfilment fees, plus GST. Model the full stack before you price, or a shelf-profitable product loses money on the settlement.
List & reconcile
List with quality to cut returns, then read every settlement to catch the wrong shipping and return charges before the money is gone.
You sell. Robnu runs the rest.
Getting live on Amazon is the easy part; sustaining the daily operation without it consuming you is the real challenge. Amazon is live for Robnu today. Robnu is an agentic OMS — it runs the operation itself and makes sure every rupee is paid correctly: order processing on a schedule, cross-marketplace inventory sync, ads on real ROI that pause losers and boost winners, the AI Catalog Studio for product images and video (credits included to start), returns and claims recovery, GST invoice handling, and settlement reconciliation to the rupee.
Fully-autonomous claim filing is rolling out, so today there is the occasional rare approval click where a human sign-off genuinely helps — but the shape of it is that you sell, and the operation runs itself. The same engine already runs AJIO and Meesho, so a multi-marketplace seller gets one operation, not three.
Free while we figure out pricing — no card, no caps, forever free under 25 orders a day when paid pricing launches.
Selling on Amazon India, answered
A GSTIN for taxable goods, a PAN, a bank account in the business name, and at least one product to list. Amazon verifies these during registration through Seller Central. Some categories such as books may be sold without GST, but most physical goods require a valid GSTIN before your listings go live.
With FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon) you send stock to Amazon's warehouse and Amazon picks, packs, ships, and handles returns for you — you pay storage and fulfilment fees in return for hands-off logistics and Prime eligibility. With Easy Ship you store and pack the orders yourself, and Amazon's logistics picks up from your location and delivers. FBA trades fees for convenience; Easy Ship trades effort for lower fees.
Amazon earns through a per-order stack: a referral fee (a category-set percentage of the sale), a closing fee, and shipping or fulfilment fees that depend on whether you use FBA or Easy Ship, plus GST. Your net payout is the sale value minus this stack. The exact percentages vary by category and change over time, so always model them before pricing.
It depends on your volume, margins, and how hands-on you want to be. Easy Ship keeps fees lower and suits sellers who can pack reliably at their own location. FBA suits products where Prime eligibility and hands-off logistics justify the storage and fulfilment fees. Many sellers start with Easy Ship and move popular, fast-moving items to FBA once the maths supports it.
Returns depend on your fulfilment choice. Under FBA, Amazon handles the return leg; under Easy Ship, the parcel comes back to you. Either way a return means lost margin and reverse logistics, and some return charges can be wrong — a mismatched weight, a duplicate, or a parcel billed but never received. Those are recoverable if you reconcile and claim.
For the vast majority of physical goods, yes — a valid GSTIN is mandatory before you can list. A narrow set of GST-exempt categories, such as certain books, is the exception. Registering for GST also lets you claim input tax credit on your costs, so it is worth doing properly at the start.
With documents in order, the account can be created quickly through Seller Central. What takes longer is category approval for gated categories and getting listings to pass quality checks. Most sellers are live within a few days, assuming no verification mismatch on GST or bank details.
Yes — Amazon is live for Robnu today. Robnu is an agentic OMS that runs Amazon order processing, inventory sync, ads on real ROI, the AI Catalog Studio for images and video, returns and claims recovery, and settlement reconciliation to the rupee — with a rare approval click where a human sign-off genuinely helps. You sell; Robnu runs the rest.
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