The 90-day Amazon India launch playbook: listing live to first 1,000 reviews.

Most Amazon India launches we audit have the same problem: founders run them like a website launch — ship it, drive traffic, hope it converts. Amazon doesn't work that way. The marketplace's algorithm rewards velocity in a specific sequence: listing readiness → review velocity → ad-driven sales → organic rank climb. Mess up the order and the algorithm filters you out before page one ever sees you.

We've run this 90-day system for new SKU launches across Quick Heal, Glenmark, CSS, Naaptol, Zartari and a dozen others. The phases below aren't theoretical — they're the actual scaffolding we copy-paste into every launch deck.

The four-phase shape

Before the detail, here's the whole 90 days on a single page:

If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this: weeks 1–4 are supposed to be unprofitable. The brands that try to launch at a 25% ACoS in week 2 fail almost every time. You're buying data and ranking velocity, not revenue.

The most common reason an Amazon launch fails is not the launch itself — it's that pre-launch was rushed. The minimum bar to flip the listing live:

1. Keyword research

Use Helium 10, Jungle Scout, or Amazon's own search-term reports from a similar ASIN you already run. Build three keyword tiers:

• Hero keywords (3–5): the queries you absolutely must rank for. High volume, exact category-defining intent. Example for a kitchenware launch: "tongs steel," "kitchen tongs," "cooking tongs set."
• Supporting keywords (15–25): mid-volume long-tail. Where you'll first appear and earn velocity before climbing on hero terms.
• Defensive keywords (5–10): your brand name + variants, plus competitor brand names you might intercept.

2. Listing build (the part everyone underestimates)

Title, bullets, description, A+ content, backend search terms, attributes. Each of these moves search rank independently. Get all six right or you'll fix one a month for nine months.

• Title: brand → hero keyword → key attribute → variant. ~150 characters, include 1 hero keyword and 1 supporting keyword.
• Bullets: 5 bullets, lead with benefit (in caps), then specifics. Mention 8–12 supporting keywords across all 5 bullets without stuffing.
• A+ content: at least 5 modules. Comparison module + brand story + lifestyle imagery. Brand Registry required.
• Backend search terms: 250 bytes. Use synonyms, vernacular spellings (Hindi transliterations), competitor brand names where defensible, common misspellings.
• Photography: 7 images minimum — hero white background, lifestyle, infographic with key features, scale comparison, packaging shot, in-use shot, variant grid. Mobile-first composition: 80% of India shops Amazon on phone.

3. Operational readiness

• Brand Registry active (without it, you can't run SB ads, A+ content, or defend listings — non-negotiable).
• FBA inventory inbound, with at least 8–10 weeks of estimated demand on hand. The launch ranks die the day you go out of stock.
• Pricing modelled against the Amazon India fee calculator. Know your break-even ACoS, your contribution per order, and your floor price before going live.
• Vine enrolled (₹15,000 per ASIN — worth every rupee for the first 30 reviews; we'll come back to this).
• Inserts printed: a small package insert that politely asks for a review. Do not incentivise — Amazon ToS violation. Just well-designed, friendly, and signed by the founder if it's an early-stage brand.

Listing is live. Inventory is in. The clock starts. The only goal of this phase is to give Amazon's algorithm three things to learn from: ad clicks, conversions, and reviews. Whatever revenue you make is a side effect.

Ad strategy: pure auto SP, aggressive bids

Run 2–3 Sponsored Products auto campaigns at 1.5–2x your eventual target bid. Yes, that means a 60–100% ACoS in weeks 1–2. That's correct. You're paying Amazon to tell you which keywords actually convert for your listing — data you cannot get any other way.

• Daily budget: enough that the campaign doesn't run out of budget before noon. Usually ₹1,500–₹3,000/day per ASIN.
• Targeting: "close match" + "loose match" auto, separate campaigns. Skip "substitutes" and "complements" until week 3.
• Pull search-term reports daily. Bookmark every search term where ACoS is below 80% and at least one conversion has happened.

Reviews: Vine first, then organic flow

Enrol the ASIN in Amazon Vine the day inventory clears check-in. Vine reviews land at days 7–21 and are weighted heavily by the algorithm because they're verified. Target: 25–30 Vine reviews by end of week 4.

In parallel, the package insert kicks in for organic reviews from real buyers. Realistic conversion: 1.5–3% of buyers leave a review when politely asked. So 100 orders = 2–3 organic reviews per week. Don't chase numbers; chase a clean star average above 4.3.

What good looks like at end of week 4

• 30+ reviews, average rating ≥4.3
• BSR ranked in top 200 for primary category
• 20–40 search terms identified as converting (these become week 5 manual campaigns)
• Conversion rate stabilising around 8–14% on hero traffic

If you're materially below those numbers, don't move to Phase 2 yet. Either reviews are stuck, the listing isn't converting, or pricing is wrong. Diagnose first; accelerate later.

You now have data Amazon's algorithm understands. This phase is about pouring fuel on what's working and stopping spend on what isn't.

Migrate auto winners to manual exact-match

Take every search term from Phase 1 with ACoS below 60% and at least 2 conversions. Build manual exact-match SP campaigns for those terms with bids 15–25% higher than the auto bid that won them. Add them as negatives in the auto campaigns so you stop competing with yourself.

Add a manual broad-match campaign on your hero keywords. Lower bids than exact, wider intent capture. Add a product-targeting campaign on 5–10 direct competitor ASINs.

Launch Sponsored Brands video

If you have Brand Registry and a brand store, launch one SB video on your top 3 hero keywords. SB video has 1.5–2x the CTR of SP banners and 30–50% lower CPCs on the same keyword. It also signals brand legitimacy to Amazon's ranking model.

Don't go heavy on SB yet — 15–20% of total ad spend is right for this phase. The full SP/SB/SD allocation framework is in our ad-mix post.

Listing optimisation pass #1

You now have 4 weeks of conversion data. Run an A/B test on your main image (Amazon's "Manage Your Experiments" if eligible, or a controlled price-and-image test). The image test alone typically lifts CR by 12–25% in our launches.

Update the title to lead with the highest-converting search term you discovered in Phase 1 (often not the one you originally guessed). Update bullets to address the top objections that appear in the first 30 reviews.

What good looks like at end of week 8

• 100+ reviews, rating ≥4.3
• BSR top 30 in primary category
• ACoS dropping toward 35–50%
• TACoS (total ads ÷ total revenue) entering 12–18% — a leading indicator that organic is starting to do work. Why TACoS matters more than ACoS →
• At least one supporting keyword now ranking on page 1 organically

The launch is almost over. This phase transitions you out of "launch mode" thinking and into "ongoing operation" thinking. Three jobs:

Add Sponsored Display retargeting and PDP defence

Now that you have ASIN traffic, SD earns its budget. Two campaigns to start:

• SD retargeting on viewers of your ASIN in the last 7 days who didn't buy. ROAS in our launches consistently runs 4–8x.
• SD PDP defence on your own product page. Stops competitors from showing ads to a customer already on your listing. Cheap, defensive, almost always positive.

Defend brand search

By week 9 you have meaningful brand search volume — people typing your brand name to find you. Run a defensive SB headline ad on your own brand name. If you don't, competitors will buy that traffic at a fraction of the cost they'd pay on a category keyword.

Keep brand-search ACoS in the 4–10% band. Anything below 4% means you're under-defending; anything above 12% means you're either over-bidding or being aggressively conquested by a competitor.

Listing optimisation pass #2

Refresh A+ content with the strongest customer benefits that emerged from real reviews. Update photography if a specific angle is mentioned repeatedly in negative reviews. Add an FAQ module if pre-purchase questions cluster around the same 3–5 themes.

What good looks like at end of week 12

• 1,000+ reviews (Vine + organic + steady velocity)
• BSR top 10 in primary category
• ACoS at 20–35%, TACoS at 8–12%
• Hero keywords ranking organically in top 5
• Steady-state daily revenue at or above target launch run-rate

The launch budget — illustrative numbers

For a single hero SKU at ₹999 selling price, a realistic launch P&L looks like this:

Net cumulative result depends on your contribution per order. For most consumer goods at ₹999, this maths to a small launch loss in cash terms but a built ASIN that runs at 25–35% blended margin from month 4 onward. The "loss" is the cost of buying a defensible top-10 BSR position. The brands that try to skip the loss and launch at break-even ACoS almost always end up paying more total over 9 months.

Five things that kill launches in India specifically

1. Going out of stock. Amazon will quietly demote you the moment you switch to "currently unavailable." Recovery takes 6–8 weeks. Plan for 10+ weeks of stock from day 1, not 4.
2. Pricing above ₹1,000 unintentionally. Crossing the referral fee cliff at launch can drop your net by 8–15% per order — exactly when you can least afford it. More here →
3. Skipping Vine. The first 30 reviews matter more than the next 300. Vine gets you there in 3 weeks; "wait for organic" takes 4 months.
4. Cookie-cutter listing copy from D2C. Amazon search ranks on different signals than your D2C site. Copy-paste catalogues underperform on Amazon by 30–50%.
5. Optimising ACoS in week 2. Lowering bids in Phase 1 to "improve efficiency" kills the data Amazon needs to give you ranking velocity. The biggest mistake we see new agencies make.

What to do this week

1. If you're pre-launch: use the pre-launch checklist above and don't go live until every box is ticked. The temptation to launch early costs more than it saves.
2. If you're in week 1–4: stop optimising for ACoS. Optimise for search-term coverage and Vine velocity. Tighten ACoS in week 5.
3. If you're in week 5–8: migrate every winning auto search term to manual exact match this week. Launch your first SB video. Run an image A/B test.
4. If you're in week 9–12: turn on SD retargeting + brand search defence. Plan the listing optimisation pass for week 11. Decide your steady-state ad allocation now.
5. If your launch is past 90 days and not at top 30 BSR: the issue is almost always one of (a) stock-outs, (b) pricing, (c) ad allocation, or (d) listing CR. Audit those four in that order.

An Amazon India launch isn't hard if you run it as a system. It's hard when you run it as a series of isolated decisions. The 90-day frame above is what turns it into the former.