How to Sell Sarees on Meesho: Account, GST, Fees and First Orders

Meesho is where a great many saree businesses start, and for sound reasons. It charges no commission, it pays on a fixed day, and since October 2023 it lets you sell without a GST number. Those same features attract a lot of other sellers, which is why the first months there are mostly about pricing and patience. Everything below is taken from Meesho's own seller pages as they read on 22 October 2026, with the source linked, and where a figure comes from what sellers report rather than from Meesho, it says so.

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One disclosure before we start: SareeViz makes AI model photos for sarees, and the photo section below mentions it. Everything else here applies whatever you use for photos.

Step 1: what you need to open a Meesho seller account

Registration is free and happens on supplier.meesho.com. Meesho asks for four things: a mobile number and email, a tax registration, a bank account, and a pickup address where its courier will collect your parcels. The tax registration is the only part with a real choice in it.

You then pick a store name, which buyers see on every listing. Pick it as if you will keep it: a store name is the closest thing a Meesho seller has to a brand, and it is what a happy buyer searches for when they come back.

Step 2: with GST or without?

Since 1 October 2023, sellers without a GSTIN can sell on Meesho with an Enrolment ID / UIN, which you get from the GST portal at no cost. Meesho's page for sellers without GST sets out the trade. You can sell only inside the state you registered in, Meesho Ads are closed to you, and there is a turnover ceiling. Meesho's page puts it at ₹40 lakh (₹20 lakh in the north-eastern states), after which it restricts further sales until you get a GSTIN. The government notification behind the scheme, 34/2023-Central Tax, ties the ceiling to the general registration limit instead, which on a plain reading is ₹20 lakh (₹10 lakh in special-category states). If your sales are heading towards either number, get a CA's view and a GSTIN before you reach it.

For a saree seller in Surat, that state-only rule matters more than the turnover cap. Gujarat is a large market, but most of your buyers live elsewhere, and an Enrolment ID keeps your listings away from all of them. The Enrolment ID route is a good way to test whether your sarees sell at all. Once they do, a GSTIN opens the rest of India. Composition GSTIN holders are in between: they can register too, but are limited to their own state in the same way, with a turnover cap of ₹1.5 crore.

Step 3: what Meesho actually charges you

"Zero commission" is true, and it is also not the whole bill. Here is everything that comes out of a Meesho sale, from Meesho's pricing and shipping pages unless marked otherwise.

Two of those lines decide whether a saree makes money. Shipping is paid on every order and comes with GST on top. The return fee is paid only on returns, but on a ₹300 to ₹500 saree a single return can cancel the profit on two or three good orders. The TCS is a deduction rather than a cost, since the 0.5% TCS collected on your sales can be set off against the GST you owe. Your income tax position is separate again; a CA can tell you in an hour what applies to you.

Payment arrives on a fixed schedule: Meesho pays on the 7th day after delivery, cash-on-delivery orders included. An order delivered on the 1st is paid on the 8th, which is quicker than most wholesale buyers pay.

Step 4: price the saree for the returns, not just the sale

The commonest story in seller forums is "orders came, profit didn't", and it nearly always traces back to a price set as if every order would be delivered and kept. A safer way is to build the price up from the costs, with a buffer for returns. Here is one worked example. Every number in it is an assumption; replace each with your own, and take the shipping figure from the panel, which shows it for your weight and zone.

The buffer looks small until the return rate moves. At one return in five instead of one in ten, the same saree needs about ₹22 more per delivered order just to stand still, and that is before counting the saree that comes back unsellable. If a price only works when nothing comes back, it does not work.

Step 5: list your first catalogs

On Meesho you list in catalogs rather than single products. A catalog holds one to nine products from the same category, you can upload one at a time or many with a spreadsheet, and it goes live about 72 hours after upload, according to Meesho's how it works page. The same page suggests three or four products per catalog and five to seven catalogs in your first few days, which is the line this guide started with.

For sarees, Meesho's saree selling page makes price, GST rate, HSN code and weight compulsory, and sets the photo rules: JPEG files, no logo or watermark, and no partial images of the saree with props. A takedown sellers run into often is a wholesaler's photo reused with the wholesaler's logo, watermark or price sticker still on it. Photograph your own stock, even if the wholesaler sent you photos.

The front photo does most of the selling. A buyer scrolling a feed of sarees decides on colour, border and how the saree falls, and a folded saree on a bed shows only the first of those. Our Meesho photo guide sets out what Meesho asks for and what a complete set looks like, and the Meesho product photography page shows the same saree as a phone photo and on a model.

This is where SareeViz comes in, if you want it. You photograph the saree flat on your phone, and pick Meesho as the marketplace; it makes 3 photos on a model at 1K for 3 credits, which is ₹30 plus 18% GST at our smallest credit pack. Whatever you use, hold the real saree next to the screen before you list. A border that comes out a shade off in the photo is a "not as shown" return waiting to happen, and you have just seen what a return costs.

Step 6: shipping, returns and claims

Meesho's shipping page asks you to ship within two to three days of the order, in plain packaging with no branding, and Meesho does not supply packaging. Its own courier network, Valmo, now carries most Meesho parcels. Customers can return within 7 days of delivery. When they do, you pay the return shipping; when the courier fails to deliver after three attempts and the parcel comes back as RTO, Meesho charges no extra fee.

The painful case is the wrong return, when what comes back is used, damaged or not your saree at all. Sellers report that Meesho accepts claims for these only within 7 days of receiving the return, and that claims get refused when a seller files them often. Meesho does not publish a threshold for that, so treat it as the experience of sellers rather than a rule. What helps either way is evidence. Many sellers record a short video of packing every order and of opening every return, and some tag each saree so a swapped piece is easy to prove.

The cheapest return is the one that never happens. Most saree returns come down to the saree not looking like its photo, in colour, in border width or in how heavy the fabric looks. Accurate photos and an honest fabric description in the listing do more for your return rate than any claim process.

Step 7: getting the first orders

A new account with one catalog is close to invisible. The levers Meesho itself points to are volume, speed and price. Volume means getting those five to seven catalogs up. Speed means dispatching quickly: Meesho runs a Next Day Dispatch programme for sellers who ship the day after the order, with a badge and extra visibility in return. And price means checking what similar sarees sell for before you set yours, not after a quiet week.

Meesho Ads can push a new catalog, but they need a regular GSTIN, so Enrolment ID sellers cannot use them. For everyone else they are worth a small test budget, judged on orders and returns together rather than on clicks.

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