Flipkart has removed the Rs 1,000 price ceiling on its zero-commission policy for fashion products, extending the benefit across its entire fashion category. The Walmart-owned e-commerce company announced the change in a statement on Wednesday, saying it would help nearly 90,000 active fashion sellers retain their full margins regardless of product price.
WHAT’S CHANGED
Until now, Flipkart’s zero-commission policy applied only to fashion items priced up to Rs 1,000. With the price cap removed, sellers across every price segment — including premium clothing, footwear, and accessories — will no longer pay commission on fashion sales made through the platform.
The company said the move is aimed at supporting micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, homegrown labels and emerging designers in particular, allowing them to reinvest the additional margin into product innovation, expanding their catalogues and building their brands.
“Our role is to create the conditions for them to grow,” said Kapil Thirani, Vice President, Flipkart Fashion, in the company’s statement.
BACKGROUND
Flipkart first introduced zero commission on products priced below Rs 1,000 across categories in November 2025, positioning it as a way to lower the cost of doing business for merchants on the platform. It later extended zero commission, irrespective of price or category, to sellers on Shopsy, its hypervalue platform. Wednesday’s announcement takes that policy a step further by applying it to the entire fashion category on the main Flipkart marketplace, without any price limit.
Flipkart has more than 500 million registered users and over 1.4 million sellers on its platform, according to the company.
THE COMPETITIVE BACKDROP
The move comes amid intensifying competition among Indian e-commerce platforms over seller economics. Meesho pioneered zero commission for all sellers as far back as 2021 and has built its marketplace proposition around the model, a strategy that helped it capture roughly 37 percent of e-commerce order volumes in FY25 before it went public in December 2025 — ahead of both Flipkart and Amazon.
Amazon India followed with its own fee reset in March 2026, waiving referral fees on products priced up to Rs 1,000 across more than 1,800 categories, up from an earlier threshold of Rs 300 across 135 categories. The company said the change would cover more than 125 million products, including apparel, footwear and fashion jewellery, and could save sellers up to 70 percent in fees.
By removing the price ceiling entirely, Flipkart’s latest move pushes the zero-commission contest beyond budget fashion and into higher-priced homegrown and D2C labels — a segment rivals have not yet targeted with similar fee waivers.
WHY IT MATTERS
India’s apparel market, currently valued at more than $70 billion, is projected to grow to $130–150 billion by 2030 at an annual rate of 10–12 percent, according to estimates from Redseer. The consultancy expects branded apparel to make up the bulk of that growth, expanding more than twice as fast as unbranded apparel.
For marketplaces, capturing that growth depends not just on attracting shoppers but on persuading brands and sellers to list a deeper range of products at higher price points. Analysts note that giving up commission revenue on higher-value fashion items is a bet by Flipkart that a broader, higher-quality seller base will pay off in market share — even as it raises questions about how the company will offset the lost revenue, since zero commission does not mean the platform’s costs of running the marketplace disappear.
The announcement also lands against a backdrop of regulatory scrutiny: earlier this week, the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation reportedly asked the government to examine whether Flipkart’s and Amazon’s expansion into quick commerce complies with India’s foreign direct investment rules for e-commerce marketplaces.
