Amazon India Waives Referral Charges on 125M Products in Major Marketplace Push

Amazon India has reduced fees for millions of merchants in an effort to boost its growth. In 2025, the e-commerce company covered 12 million products without referral fees. This year, they increased the coverage to over 125 million products priced under INR1,000 across more than 1,800 categories, a tenfold increase.

Amazon also cut their Easy Ship fees for items under INR 300 by more than 20%. With Easy Ship, merchants may keep their products on-site and let Amazon take care of pickup and delivery. This is a great option for sellers who are just starting out in e-commerce or who are looking to scale up their business because the logistics expenses are reduced.

Positive Move for Sellers on Amazon

Sellers who ship multiple units in a single shipment can also experience a reduction of up to 90% in selling fees for the second unit, which further enhances the overall savings. Effective March 16, the new costs will be in place. The brand is now extending that commitment to benefit a much bigger cohort of sellers, according to Amit Nanda, director, selling partner services, Amazon India. This follows the strong impact of last year's fee reductions.

The goal of this change is to make it easier and more profitable for small businesses and entrepreneurs in Tier-II and Tier-III cities to sell on Amazon. In addition, Nanda mentioned that sellers can save as much as 70% in fees by cutting logistical expenses and doing away with referral fees across more than 1,800 categories and 12.5 crore products.

Taken as a whole, these alterations demonstrate Amazon's persistent drive to return operational savings to vendors and consumers. One of three fulfilment options available to Amazon sellers is the possibility for sellers to handle customer order fulfilment independently. Plus, they have Easy Ship (ES), where they keep things and Amazon takes care of shipping and collection. Additionally, sellers have the option to use Fulfilled by Amazon, which allows Amazon to take care of storage, packing, and shipping instead of sellers.

Amazon Invests in OpenAI

OpenAI, on 27 February, revealed that it has raised an $110 billion funding round. The recent funding round has put the ChatGPT creator's valuation at $840 billion. This development indicates a rapid increase in investment in AI. Just before the AI startup is set to have its mega-IPO later this year, a $30 billion investment came from SoftBank, $30 billion from Nvidia, and $50 billion from Amazon. Tech giants and investors like SoftBank are rushing to form alliances with OpenAI. One of the major global AI players, OpenAI, is currently spending substantially on data centres in the hopes of gaining an advantage in the artificial intelligence race.