Large online sellers who have affiliations or investments from e-tailers like Amazon and Flipkart are paying only about 5-11% of their revenue as marketplace fee, while regular third-party sellers typically pay at least 15% as platform fee.
The latest balance sheets of major online sellers like Cloudtail, Appario Retail, and Tech-Connect Retail show the amount they pay as platform fee to online marketplaces. Cloudtail paid Rs 315 crore (USD 45.2 million) as platform fee to Amazon on a revenue of Rs 7,149 crore (USD 1 billion) in FY2018. That’s 4.4%. It’s about 11% for Tech-Connect Retail, which owns one of the largest sellers on Flipkart, RetailNet.
Small third-party sellers have frequently alleged that e-commerce players favour these alpha sellers on their platforms. This is among the reasons that persuaded the government recently to issue a circular stating that sellers that have direct or indirect investment from the e-commerce platforms cannot sell on these platforms.
Source: Economic Times