Understanding Marketplace Commission Structures in India

Commission isn’t a single number for any marketplace — it’s a category-by-category rate card that marketplaces revise periodically, sometimes with little advance notice to individual sellers.

Amazon and Flipkart both structure commission as a percentage of the selling price, varying by product category — electronics typically sit at the lower end (single digits), while categories like apparel and home goods can run considerably higher. The exact rate for your specific sub-category is usually buried in a rate card PDF or seller dashboard page that most sellers check once at listing time and never again.

That "check once" habit is the risk. Rate cards change, sometimes for an entire category, sometimes for narrower sub-segments within it. If your product moved sub-categories, or the marketplace revised the rate, you won’t know unless you’re comparing your actual settled commission against the current rate card periodically — not just trusting last year’s number.

Meesho’s structure has historically been simpler and lower for many categories, which is part of why it’s often the entry point for new sellers, but "simpler" doesn’t mean "static" — it’s still worth verifying periodically rather than assuming.

The practical habit worth building: whenever a marketplace announces a fee update, spend ten minutes checking your last month’s settled commission against the new rate for your top few SKUs by volume. Catching a misapplied rate change in month one is a lot easier than untangling it after six months of settlements.