Thread by @splainerin

#BigStory

For the past few years, the govt has been tightening the screws on foreign-owned e-commerce giants—to favour Indian traders and merchants and local rivals. The latest salvo will come as a big blow to these platforms, and its biggest sellers and also you, dear customer.

In Jan 2020, the Competition Commission of India, opened a probe into Amazon and Flipkart, citing four anti-competitive practices: exclusive launch of mobile phones , promoting preferred sellers, deep discounting, and prioritizing some seller listings over others.

Both Amazon and Flipkart are currently in court, fiercely fighting to block the probe. The government has moved to strike a potentially decisive blow to Amazon and Flipkart. It unveiled a draft of a new ecommerce policy that stipulates:

1. No marketplace e-commerce entity can sell goods or services to any person who is registered as a seller on its platform. Translation: Amazon etc can no longer use their wholesale arm to give big discounts to Special Merchants so they can undersell their rivals.

2. The ecommerce platform cannot offer lower fees to sellers to incentivise them to offer bigger discounts to their customers. This is currently standard practice during the big sales. Translation: Say goodbye to those massive Diwali discounts.
3. No flash sales.

4. To promote ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, the companies will have to suggest ‘made in India’ products to customers before they make a purchase.
5. No user information collected by the platform can be shared with “related parties.”

Read our #BigStory today for more on how the government's draft of a new ecommerce policy will impact both sellers and customers:
splainer.in/posts/2021/Sel…

#Newrules #Amazon #Flipkart #IndianGovernment #Reliance #Indiantraders #preferentialtreatment #exclusivedeals #antitrust