Small outlets have criticised the draft e-commerce coverage as they now worry domination by way of their bigger home competitors which include Reliance and Future Group. The smaller players fear the local giants may be indulging in exclusive offers and predatory pricing strategies as utilized by Amazon and Flipkart in the market version.
However, a discussion board representing domestic outlets said the difficulty of FDI in multi-logo retail had been addressed by way of the coverage.
“The policy appears to be silent on domestic e-trade players, which is unwanted. They need to also be added underneath the policy,” Praveen Khandelwal, secretary-wellknown of the Confederation of All India Traders said.
“We worry that it will culminate into an uneven degree gambling field and could supply liberty to domestic e-trade gamers to adopt malpractices as have been being carried out by way of global e-commerce players. It will damage the basic rationale of the authorities to carry every stakeholder on a par.”
The draft coverage launched on Saturday said: “An e-commerce platform, in which overseas investment has been made, therefore, can not exercising possession or control over the inventory offered on its platform… Overseas investment isn’t always seen as a hazard by means of small offline shops of multi-branded merchandise.”
Online marketplaces must not adopt enterprise fashions or strategies which might be discriminatory and which favour one or few sellers/traders working on their platforms over others, the draft clarifies. It enlists sure steps, which has to be observed by way of all e-trade web sites and packages.
The coverage also requires all e-commerce websites and programs available for download in India to have a registered business entity in India as the importer on record or the entity via which all income in India are transacted.
However, Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India, a frame representing home shops, said: “The whole difficulty changed into FDI being used for doing multi-logo retail, even supposing it’s far on-line commercial enterprise and placing others into a large number… can not equate international gamers with domestic stores.”
