Flipkart Saarthi or a paid agency? Take the free help first if your problem is inside Flipkart Ads

If your only problem is that your Flipkart Ads campaigns are badly run, take the free help first. Saarthi costs you nothing, and an agency Flipkart matched you with will set up bids and budgets at least as well as most freelancers you'd pay. Pay for an agency only when the problem sits outside the ad console: your margin after returns, a second marketplace, or demand that has to come from somewhere other than Flipkart search.

What Flipkart actually launched

On 27 August 2026 Flipkart Ads announced Saarthi, its Ads Partner Program. It has two parts. The first is an AI campaign dashboard, built with AtTheRate.ai, that every seller gets. The second is a network of certified agency partners who manage campaigns hands-on. Flipkart names Accenture and Dentsu among them. Flipkart says the support comes at zero cost to the seller, and that sellers are matched to partners "based on business stage, growth objectives, and advertising readiness."

Flipkart has not published who qualifies or how to sign up. Look in Seller Hub or ask your account manager before you plan around it.

The free agency works for Flipkart Ads, so judge it on Flipkart Ads

A Saarthi partner is there to make your Flipkart Ads work, and that's a fair job. That covers the things every seller gets wrong early: PLA and PCA sharing one campaign, a flat budget through Big Billion Days, bids set once and never touched. If that is where your money leaks, free help is the cheapest fix you'll find.

It won't tell you to spend less on Flipkart, move stock to Amazon, or fix the listing whose orders keep coming back as returns. Those calls need someone whose fee doesn't depend on which platform wins.

Four questions that decide it

1. Do you know your break-even ROAS on Flipkart, with returns in it? If not, no agency, free or paid, can tell you whether the ads work. Work it out first.
2. Do you sell on more than one marketplace? A Flipkart partner sees Flipkart. If Amazon or Meesho is half your revenue, one person should be deciding where the next rupee goes.
3. Is your problem clicks or conversion? Bad bids are an ads problem. A listing that gets clicks and no orders is a content and pricing problem, and a campaign manager can't fix it from the console.
4. Does demand exist yet? Flipkart Ads only catches people already searching. A new brand in a category nobody searches for needs demand built elsewhere first, through creators, Meta or Google.

If you sell on two marketplaces, your listings convert badly, or nobody searches for your category yet, you need more than Saarthi. If you sell only on Flipkart, people already search for what you make, and the leak is in the bids, the free help is probably enough for now.

If you do pay, pay for what the free help can't do

Paying an agency to do exactly what a Saarthi partner does for free makes no sense. If you hire, the brief should be the work outside the console: profit per order after returns, the split between marketplaces, the listing, and demand that comes from off the platform.

For what it costs, here is how we price it. Our revenue share model is a fixed fee from ₹25,000 a month, half our usual rate, for marketing on Amazon, Flipkart or any marketplace, plus 10% of marketplace revenue. Additional services cost extra. Sellers doing ₹5 to 9 lakh a month on marketplaces pay a fixed fee of up to ₹50,000 a month instead, because revenue share would cost them more. Other agencies' published prices are in our comparison of Flipkart marketing agencies.

What we'd do this week

Ask Flipkart for Saarthi. Let the partner run your ads for a full month. Keep your own sheet of orders, returns and profit per unit, because the dashboard will show ROAS, and ROAS doesn't include what you lose on returns. If after a month the ads look healthy and profit still doesn't move, the ads were not the problem. That's the point where paying someone makes sense.

Is Flipkart Saarthi free for sellers?

Flipkart says yes. Its 27 August 2026 announcement describes Saarthi as professional advertising support at zero cost to sellers: an AI campaign dashboard for every seller, and certified agency partners who manage campaigns for the sellers Flipkart matches with them. Flipkart has not published the eligibility rules, so check Seller Hub before you count on a partner.

Which agencies are part of Flipkart Saarthi?

Flipkart names Accenture and Dentsu among its certified partners, and says sellers are matched to a partner by business stage, growth objectives and advertising readiness. You don't pick the agency yourself.

When is a paid Flipkart agency worth it over Saarthi?

When the problem sits outside the Flipkart ad console: profit per order after returns, a budget split across Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho, listings that get clicks and no orders, or a category where demand has to be built off Flipkart first. If that's you, talk to us, see how much it costs to advertise on Flipkart, or read how our revenue share model works.