The 30-day prior-price rule for discounts, from 1 January 2027

What the 30-day prior-price rule means

From 1 January 2027, the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026 require that when an Indian e-commerce or quick-commerce platform advertises a price reduction, it must show the price before the cut, and that prior price is defined as the lowest price the product was offered at during the 30 days before the announcement, not simply yesterday’s price or the printed MRP.¹

That is a materially different number in practice. A product that has been selling at 248 rupees most days but touched 199 rupees for a handful of days inside the last 30 cannot advertise “20% off 285” on the strength of its usual price; the reference has to be 199 rupees, the real 30-day low.

Why this lands right before two festive seasons

The rule takes effect on 1 January 2027, which reporting frames as brands entering their last festive season before the new definition binds them. Quick commerce accounts for a large and growing share of India’s e-grocery orders, and platforms already run deep, frequent discount cycles during festive periods; a mystery-shopping exercise cited in reporting found average discounts across a sample grocery basket ranging across several categories, with personal care discounted more heavily than staples or dairy, and with discount intensity already reported as moderating through 2026 even before this rule applies.¹

That pattern matters because a category that discounts often and unevenly is exactly where a simple, single reference price stops being obviously correct. A product that drops in and out of a promotion every few days accumulates a real 30-day low that can sit well under its typical price, and a platform or seller that keeps advertising against the usual price rather than that low is the behaviour the rule is aimed at. The gap between the two numbers is largest in exactly the categories reporting says discount the hardest, which is the reason this guide opens with a real chart rather than a general description: a single dated example makes the size of that gap checkable rather than asserted.

What is confirmed, and what is still pending

• Confirmed: the Department of Consumer Affairs notified the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026, effective 1 January 2027, and reporting describes the 30-day-low prior-price requirement in that shape.¹²
• Still pending, as of this guide’s last update: exactly how a platform must compute “the lowest price in 30 days” when the same SKU is sold at different prices by different sellers, dark stores or pin codes on the same platform. The reporting we read states the rule, not its computation mechanics.

This is not legal advice. Check the amendment’s own notified text and your own counsel before relying on any date, threshold or computation described here, and treat any date or number in this guide as read from press reporting rather than from the notification itself until you have checked the primary text.

What “lowest in 30 days” looks like on a real listing

This is a real, dated reading, not an illustration or a simulation. It is one SKU, one app, one 30-day window, not a claim about the wider category or about Mamaearth generally.

On most days in this window the price sat at 248 rupees. On four days (18, 25, 26 and 27 September) it dropped to 199 rupees. Read on 30 September, with the price back at 248 rupees, a discount advertised that day under the new rule would have to show 199 rupees as the prior price, not 248 rupees and not the 285-rupee MRP.

What this means for a brand

Two different teams have reason to care about the same number. A brand running its own discounts needs to know its true 30-day low before it advertises a cut, or it risks publishing a reference price the rule does not allow. A brand watching a retailer or reseller’s pricing needs the same number to check whether an advertised discount is honest under the new definition.

Either way, the number is only checkable from a series of repeated, dated readings, not a single spot check. A price read once, on the day of the sale, cannot by itself tell you what the lowest price was over the whole preceding month.

A practical starting point is a rolling 30-day log per SKU per app: the date, the selling price, and whether that day counted as a promotion. From that log, the lowest value in any trailing 30-day window is a lookup, not a fresh calculation each time, and a brand can check its own upcoming discount against it before publishing rather than after a shopper or a regulator flags the gap. A brand running its own quick-commerce storefront directly can build this from its own sales system; a brand selling through resellers or sellers it does not control has a harder job, because it needs the reseller’s own daily price, not an assumed one.

How this differs from discount depth and MAP

This is not the same measurement as discount depth, which compares a selling price with MRP on one day and says nothing about the last 30. It is also not a minimum advertised price (MAP) floor, which a brand sets itself; the 30-day rule is a disclosure requirement on the reference price, not a price floor. See the FSSAI listing-disclosure guide and sponsored-label and ranking transparency for the other two rules reaching the same apps around the same period.

It is worth naming a fourth thing this is not: a claim about Rewalto’s prices. Rewalto’s own service pricing lives on its pricing page and nowhere else, and nothing in this guide, including the chart above, describes what Rewalto charges for anything. The rupee figures on this page are all observed retail selling prices for one public brand’s product on Blinkit, read by Rewalto and dated, not a price Rewalto set or sells.

Common questions

Notes

1. Source: Storyboard18, on India’s retail media boom meeting its first big transparency test, published 28 September 2026: storyboard18.com, read and quoted the same day: “Any advertised price reduction has to be accompanied by the price before the cut, meaning the lowest price over the last 30 days.” Not legal advice. Back to text
2. Source: Storyboard18, “E-commerce platforms face tighter restrictions by government on search manipulation, pricing and dark patterns”, published 11 September 2026: storyboard18.com, read the same day: “The prior price will be defined as the lowest price at which the product or service was offered during the 30 days preceding the announcement,” per the Department of Consumer Affairs’ notification of the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026, effective 1 January 2027. The primary source is the Government’s own announcement, Press Information Bureau, “Government amends E-Commerce Rules to strengthen consumer protection and promote transparency”, 10 September 2026: pib.gov.in, which states that the “prior price” is “the lowest price at which the goods or services were offered during the 30 days preceding the announcement” and that the rules come into force from 1 January 2027. Back to text