If you have already cracked Amazon and Flipkart, you might assume the rest of India works the same way: square image, pure white background, product filling most of the frame, done. That assumption is exactly what gets catalogues rejected on Meesho, Myntra, Ajio and Nykaa.
India is not one marketplace with one spec sheet. It is at least two completely different visual regimes. The horizontal marketplaces (Amazon India, Flipkart) want 1:1 square on pure white. The fashion and beauty platforms (Myntra, Ajio, Nykaa) want portrait images, and one of them will actively reject a pure white background. Meesho sits somewhere else entirely, with rules driven by a reselling model that does not exist anywhere else in the world.
Here is what each platform actually asks for in 2026, and where sellers most often trip up.
The single biggest trap: square versus portrait
Ajio, Myntra and Nykaa all display apparel in a tall frame. If you upload the same 1:1 square file you use on Amazon, one of two things happens: the platform rejects it at quality check, or it accepts it and crops it to fit, which slices the top and bottom off your garment. Neither outcome is good, and the second is worse because you may not notice for weeks.
The portrait ratios are not identical either, which is the second trap. Myntra works in 3:4. Ajio specifies 1:1.25, which is 4:5. Those are close enough to look the same in a thumbnail and different enough to cause cropping if you swap them. A 1500 x 2000 file is correct 3:4 for Myntra; the same file at Ajio's 1:1.25 would need to be 1600 x 2000.
Meesho: built for resellers, not brands
Meesho is the odd one out and the one most commonly misunderstood. It uses 1:1 square images like Flipkart, so the geometry is familiar. The rules around content are not.
- Aspect ratio: 1:1 square
- Dimensions: 500 x 500 px is the technical minimum the supplier panel will accept; 1000 x 1000 px is the practical working standard and 1200 to 1500 px gives you comfortable zoom headroom
- Format: JPEG or PNG
- File size: up to 5 MB per image, by far the most generous of the four
- Background: pure white (#FFFFFF) or a light neutral
- Frame fill: roughly 70 to 80 per cent, slightly looser than Flipkart
- Image count: minimum 3, and most catalogues should run 4 or more
The rule that catches people out is the ban on branding. No logos, no watermarks, no promotional text, no MRP or price stickers on catalogue images, and this applies to every supplier regardless of size. On Amazon a discreet logo on the packaging is fine. On Meesho, a logo on the image itself is a rejection.
The reason is structural rather than aesthetic. Meesho's growth came from resellers who forward catalogue images over WhatsApp to their own customers. To that end customer, the reseller is the brand. A supplier logo sitting in the corner of the image breaks that relationship, so Meesho strips the possibility out at the catalogue level. Fighting this is pointless: shoot clean, and put your brand story in the packaging shot rather than as an overlay.
Myntra: light grey, not white
Myntra is the platform most likely to reject work that would sail through anywhere else, because it inverts the rule every seller has internalised.
- Aspect ratio: 3:4 portrait
- Dimensions: 1080 x 1440 px minimum; 1500 x 2000 px is the sensible target for hero images
- Format: JPEG only, in sRGB. PNG is not accepted
- File size: between 500 KB and 1 MB. Note that this is a floor as well as a ceiling
- Resolution: 72 dpi or higher
- Background: for apparel, a light grey with a soft shadow is required and pure white will not be accepted. Generic non-apparel products may use white or light grey
- Angles: front, side and back are mandatory for apparel; footwear needs front, back, side, angled and a detail shot
Two further Myntra quirks are worth knowing. Apparel generally requires gender-matched model photography rather than flat lays, so a female garment goes on a female model. And footwear must be shot on the right-leg shoe only, which sounds trivial until half your catalogue comes back flagged.
That 500 KB to 1 MB band deserves attention. Most sellers only ever optimise downwards. Myntra will also flag a file that is too small, because an over-compressed 200 KB JPEG at 1500 x 2000 will show artefacts on a modern phone screen. You are aiming at a window, not a ceiling.
Ajio: 1:1.25 and a cropped first image
Ajio's specification is the most precise of the group and the least forgiving on ratio.
- Aspect ratio: 1:1.25 (4:5)
- Dimensions: more than 1000 px on both height and width; 2000 px on the long edge is a safer target
- Format: JPEG or PNG
- File size: between 200 KB and 1 MB
- Resolution: 72 dpi
- Background: light colours including white are permitted
- Frame fill: 80 to 85 per cent on standard angles, up to 100 per cent on detail shots
Ajio's distinctive rule is the first image for top wear and bottom wear: it must be a cropped shot that fills the frame with the garment, not a full-length model view. Mannequin, ghost mannequin and packaging shots are explicitly not acceptable as the first image, though ghost mannequin is fine further down the gallery. Garments must be ironed, and cropping a model's head from the base of the nose is permitted.
Nykaa: portrait, high resolution, tight file size
Nykaa's published requirements are shorter but the numbers are demanding.
- Dimensions: 1500 x 2000 px or larger
- Format: JPEG or PNG
- File size: under 2 MB
- Resolution: 72 dpi
- Quality: nothing blurry, badly cropped or pixelated
- Background: hero images on pure white, with no text overlays, seller logos or promotional badges
For beauty specifically, plan on more than a hero shot: angled views, an ingredients or claims panel close-up, and swatches for anything with colour. Nykaa also checks that the description matches what the image shows, so a listing that says "50 ml" against a photo of a 30 ml bottle risks catalogue rejection.
Side-by-side comparison
| Platform | Ratio | Target size | Format | File size | Background |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meesho | 1:1 | 1000 x 1000 to 1500 x 1500 | JPEG / PNG | Up to 5 MB | White or light neutral |
| Myntra | 3:4 | 1500 x 2000 | JPEG only | 500 KB to 1 MB | Light grey with soft shadow (apparel) |
| Ajio | 1:1.25 | 1600 x 2000 | JPEG / PNG | 200 KB to 1 MB | Light colours, white permitted |
| Nykaa | 3:4 | 1500 x 2000 | JPEG / PNG | Under 2 MB | Pure white hero |
| Flipkart | 1:1 | 1000 x 1000 to 2000 x 2000 | JPEG preferred | Not tightly specified | Pure white #FFFFFF |
Read down the file size column and the real operational problem becomes obvious. The same garment needs a 4 MB square for Meesho and a 700 KB portrait JPEG for Myntra, from one shoot. Doing that by hand, per product, per platform, is where multi-channel sellers lose their week.
A workflow that covers all four
Shoot once at the highest common denominator, then derive everything else. In practice that means capturing on a light grey sweep at a portrait framing generous enough to crop square without clipping the product.
- Shoot portrait, loose. Frame with enough headroom and floor that a 1:1 centre crop still leaves the product intact. You can always crop a portrait master into a square; you cannot invent height from a square.
- Master at 2400 px on the long edge. This comfortably feeds Ajio's 2000 px target and Nykaa's 1500 x 2000 minimum without upscaling.
- Shoot on light grey, add white as a variant. Light grey satisfies Myntra apparel and is permitted by Ajio and Meesho. Where a platform wants pure white, generate it from the same file rather than reshooting.
- Derive the four exports. 1:1 square for Meesho and Flipkart, 3:4 for Myntra and Nykaa, 1:1.25 for Ajio.
- Hit the file size bands last. Compress to target after resizing, and check the result of the Myntra floor: if a 1500 x 2000 JPEG lands at 300 KB, dial the quality back up.
Steps four and five are pure mechanics, which is exactly the sort of thing worth handing to a tool. PixelPrep takes a folder of masters and produces the correctly sized, correctly padded exports for each marketplace in one pass, so you are not re-cropping the same jacket four times.
Pre-upload checklist
- Confirmed the target ratio per platform: 1:1 for Meesho and Flipkart, 3:4 for Myntra and Nykaa, 1:1.25 for Ajio
- Myntra apparel files are on light grey with a soft shadow, not pure white, and are JPEG rather than PNG
- Myntra files land inside the 500 KB to 1 MB window, not below it
- Ajio top wear and bottom wear leads with a cropped garment shot, not a full-length model or a mannequin
- No logos, watermarks, price tags or promotional text anywhere on Meesho catalogue images
- Frame fill checked: 70 to 80 per cent on Meesho, 80 to 85 per cent on Ajio and Flipkart
- Mandatory angles supplied per category, including back views for apparel and the right-leg rule for Myntra footwear
- Colour profile is sRGB, and stated size, colour and quantity match what the photo actually shows
The practical takeaway is simple: treat India as two spec families rather than one. Build a square set and a portrait set from the same master shoot, keep a light grey and a pure white version of each hero, and the four platforms stop being four separate photography projects.