MRP vs Selling Price India 2026: Why the Same 73% Off Repeats Across Listings

On 3 September 2026 we read 64 men's jeans and trousers on Myntra. Five separate FABRIPPLE listings — classic mid-rise cargos, loose fit cargos, cotton loose fit cargo trousers and two more — were priced at exactly Rs. 539, against exactly Rs. 1,999, at exactly 73% off. Four Roadster trousers were all Rs. 638 against Rs. 2,799.

Every one of the six FABRIPPLE listings in that data stated a maximum retail price of Rs. 1,999. Not one differed. All three MQ Denim listings stated Rs. 1,599 and badged 42–44%. Both CHROVEL listings stated Rs. 1,499 and badged 74%. Across the whole shelf, 38 of 64 listings stated one of just four round numbers.

That is the thing worth understanding about a discount badge: the reference price it is calculated from is usually set once, per brand or per range, and then applied across colourways and cuts. It is an ordinary commercial practice and we allege no wrongdoing by anyone. But it means a 73% badge and a 44% badge are not telling you which garment is better value. They are telling you which brand you are looking at.

The same afternoon we read 62 ovens on Amazon. OTGs — oven toaster grillers — carried a median badge of 47%. Microwaves on the same search carried 15%. Robot vacuums on Amazon's vacuum searches ran a median 58% while canister and upright vacuums ran 18%.

And on Croma's laptop aisle, HP and Acer machines ran a median 28% off while Apple's listings took exactly two values — 7% and 3% — across all 45 of them. There was no Apple machine at 15% off, or 25%, anywhere on that shelf.

None of that reflects a sale running on OTGs and not microwaves, or on Acer and not Apple. It reflects how much distance each brand and each category leaves between its stated maximum retail price and its selling price. If you sort a mixed search by discount, you are mostly sorting by which corner of the shop has the wider convention — which is how a search for “oven” quietly steers you to an OTG rather than a microwave.

This pattern turned up on every aisle we read, and it is the most useful one to carry into a purchase. The vacuum with the most customer ratings in our data — a Eureka Forbes Quick Clean DX, 3.9 from 26,651 ratings — was 18% off. The Philips PowerPro, 4.3 from 22,896, was 22% off. The Eureka Forbes Compact was 3% off: Rs. 3,199 against a stated Rs. 3,299, a Rs. 100 saving.

The most-rated microwave, IFB's 30 litre convection at 4.4 from 6,915, was 9% off. LG's 20 litre solo, 4.2 from 1,986, was 4% off — a Rs. 310 saving. On Amazon's laptop shelf an HP 250R was listed at Rs. 49,699 against a stated Rs. 49,778: a 0% badge and a Rs. 79 difference.

Meanwhile the deepest badges we found repeatedly sat on listings with almost no ratings behind them: a 75% oven accessory rated by 83 people, a 71% OTG, robot vacuums at 70–74% against stated MRPs of Rs. 1.1 to Rs. 1.7 lakh. We are not saying those products are bad — we did not test any of them. We are saying the badge and the evidence point in opposite directions often enough that you should check both.

Pigeon's 9 litre, 20 litre and 50 litre OTG ovens on Amazon all displayed the same score from the same 7,617 ratings. All three Cadlec OTGs displayed 3.8 from 1,516. ILIFE's A30 and A30 Pro robot vacuums, Rs. 4,000 apart, both showed 4.2 from 23,686. MOVA's E10 at Rs. 14,999 and E40 Ultra at Rs. 49,497 — a Rs. 34,000 gap — both showed 4.2 from 650.

On Myntra, ten Roadster trouser listings carried five distinct scores between them and six FABRIPPLE listings carried two. This is variant grouping: models sold under one parent listing share a review pool. It is a normal way to structure a catalogue and not a fault we are alleging against any brand or retailer.

But it changes what you can read off the card. A 23,686-rating score attached to a specific robot vacuum is not 23,686 people rating that vacuum, and a shopper looking at the search result has no way to see the split. On the product page, the review section states which variant each review was left for — that is where to check it.

Nine of the 82 Amazon oven listings we pulled, and six of the 62 vacuum listings, stated a maximum retail price of almost exactly 100 times the selling price. A Faber 29 litre microwave at Rs. 16,990 showed a stated MRP of Rs. 16,99,000. A Faber 82 litre built-in at Rs. 49,799 showed Rs. 49,79,900. A DREAME L50 robot vacuum at Rs. 27,999 showed Rs. 27,99,900.

Each renders on the page as a 99% off badge. A Rs. 17 lakh domestic microwave does not exist, so these are decimal-point defects in listing data rather than discounts anyone is offering. We cannot tell from outside where in the chain the error occurs — seller feed, catalogue, or elsewhere — and we allege no wrongdoing by any retailer or brand. The underlying selling prices in those listings may be perfectly ordinary; it is only the stated MRP, and therefore the percentage, that is unusable.

We excluded all 15 before computing a single figure on any of the pages behind this one. If you see a 99% badge on a mainstream appliance, this is almost certainly what it is.

The most striking single fact in the day's reading came from Croma's laptop aisle. Of the 98 laptops we read there, 83 carried no customer rating at all, and the highest rating count on any of the remaining 15 was three. Not three hundred — three.

That is not a criticism of the retailer. Computing and large-appliance listings gather ratings slowly, and a chain that sells heavily through physical stores collects fewer online reviews. But it means that on a shelf whose median machine costs over a lakh, the star rating is not available as a decision tool, and a 5.0 from two buyers should not be treated as though it were.

The practical version of everything on this page: settle on the product using specifications and reviews from somewhere that has enough of them, then compare rupee prices across retailers, and treat the percentage as the last thing you look at. Our Myntra jeans and trousers page, Amazon oven page and Croma laptop page each show the working for one of the shelves described here.

Read the rupee price first and the percentage last. On every shelf we read, the cheapest item and the deepest badge were usually different listings.

Look at two listings from the same brand. If they state the same MRP and sell at the same price, the badge is a brand setting and carries no information about either product. Then look at a rival brand in the same category — a smaller badge there may still be the cheaper item.

Check whether the rating count is shared. Identical score and identical count on two differently-priced listings means variant grouping. Treat a 99% badge as a data error until proven otherwise, and be more suspicious of a large badge with few ratings than of a small badge with many — on this day's reading, the products thousands of people had actually bought were discounted 3–22%.