Mint ·
Economy, business and finance
New e-commerce rules may force brands to rethink short-term discounts
New e-commerce regulations in India, starting January 2027, mandate transparency in pricing by displaying past prices alongside current discounts. Brands may need to adjust promotional tactics, potentially influencing sales patterns significantly during peak shopping periods.
Bengaluru: India’s new e-commerce rules could force brands and sellers to rethink how they use discounts, particularly short-term price cuts that help drive sales during specific periods of the month, according to company executives and analysts.
The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Amendment Rules, 2026, notified on 10 September, require platforms to display both the reduced price and the lowest price at which a product was offered in the preceding 30 days whenever a price reduction is announced. The rules will come into effect on 1 January 2027.
While the rules are aimed at curbing dark patterns and improving price transparency, they could force brands to rethink how they time and structure discounts. Strategies built around frequent, short-term price cuts may become harder to sustain, potentially reshaping sales patterns during key shopping periods.
“The safer bet is that brands will maintain the same price for 30 days, rather than risk a lower price today, limiting the discounts they can offer later,” said the founder of a personal care brand, who requested anonymity.
An apparel seller with a presence across major e-retail platforms such as Flipkart, Myntra and Nykaa Fashion expects brands to be more cautious about running successive promotions. “This could particularly affect the practice of offering deeper discounts during the first week of the month, when sales tend to be stronger,” the seller said.
Sourabh Narula, head of global sales at home and personal care brand Beco, said 25-27% of the company’s monthly sales currently take place in the first seven days of the month, helped by higher discounts during that period. He expects some of this demand to shift towards the end of one month and the beginning of the next.
The real test will come during next year’s festive sales, when e-commerce platforms and sellers typically rely heavily on discounts to drive volumes. By then, the new pricing rules will be in force, potentially forcing brands to rethink how they structure and time their biggest promotions, according to executives.
The changes could also affect how sellers respond to price differences across platforms. A temporary reduction on one marketplace could become relevant when calculating the lowest price advertised elsewhere.
“Brands need to be very tight with price matching across all the platforms as well as their own website. With lower discount percentages, platform loyalty will be severely tested,” said the founder of the personal care brand.
Price mismatches are typically corrected within hours, the founder said. But under the new framework, even a brief reduction could affect the discount a seller is able to advertise later.
“Implementation of this rule will require a lot of tech changes,” said Satish Meena, analyst at Datum Intelligence. “Platforms will also have to manage pushback from sellers whose promotional strategies could be affected.”
However, with the rollout still months away, platforms are likely to use the ongoing festive season to identify and iron out potential glitches before the January deadline, according to Meena.
The rules require platforms to maintain enough pricing information to establish the relevant 30-day reference price across products and sellers. The government has also introduced requirements around search rankings, sponsored listings, seller information and annual self-audits for dark patterns.
For marketplaces, the challenge is magnified by the number of third-party sellers and the frequency with which prices can change. Platforms will likely need automated systems to track stock-keeping unit (SKU)-level prices, maintain historical records and flag discounts that could fall foul of the new requirement, according to Meena.
The treatment of coupons, bank offers, membership benefits and other promotional mechanisms could also become an important part of implementation, particularly where the effective price paid by a consumer differs from the listed selling price.
“The biggest challenge will be defining what constitutes the actual selling price when there are multiple layers of discounts and offers. Platforms will have to bring greater clarity to how these are recorded and displayed,” Meena added.