By : Sabatini Chatterjee
Recently, the Indian e-commerce industry has seen swift growth in the last few years, and it is expected to become the second largest e-commerce market in the world by 2030. Such developments are being driven by a young demographic profile (demographic dividend), increasing internet penetration and relative better economic performance of India.
Nevertheless, number of economists have emphasized that these e-commerce companies have implemented number of ways which have led to prejudicial competition with the brick-and-mortar stores of Indian markets.For example: some of the E-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart have special tie-ups with the mobile phone companies wherein,they (Amazon or Flipkart) alone would be selling these mobile phones leading to monopolistic market. Furthermore, other e-commerce companies and brick and mortar stores are not allowed to sell certain brands/versions of mobile phones.
In the same veins, e-commerce companies have also adopted discriminating trade practices such as engaging in manipulating search result to promote certain sellers, preferential treatment to some sellers, selling goods close to expiry date etc. The idea of “flash” also forms part and parcel of such manipulating schema. The of “flash sales” takes place wherein e-commerce entities sell goods at significantly reduced prices, high discounts or attractive offers for a predetermined period of time. This enables only certain selected and privileged sellers to sell goods on the e-commerce platform. Most of the time these sellers would be those which are indirectly controlled by the e-commerce companies.
Thus, in order to improve the mechanism of regulatory oversight over e-commerce companies, the Ministry of Consumer affairs had notified the Consumer Protection (E-commerce) Rules, 2020. Furthermore, the Central Government is also seeking comments from the public for the proposed amendmentsuntil July 6, 2021.
Some of the proposed amendments include: (a) Appointment of Chief Compliance Officer (b) Restrictions on Flash sales, (c) No more in-house labels, etc. As of now, the new rules are still in draft stage and have not been finalised. The link to the document is provided, if you wish you can look into
The author works as a Research Assistant at the Cultural Research Institute, Kolkata under Backward Class Welfare Department, Government of West Bengal.