E-tailers Predatory Pricing To Face Legal Actions

 Legal action against e-commerce retailers

As the shopping season from September-end to Diwali in late October is the top sales period in India, the top three e-commerce websites - Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal are all geared up for the festive season, influencing the transformation of customers from offline to digital marketing.

Flipkart-Myntra collaboration.

Flipkart's Big Billion Day sale on October 6 that offered steep discounts on various products, and Amazon with its 'Diwali Dhamaka Week' offering festive discount on October 10-16, with an intention to get as any customers to shop online as possible, is definitely a giant leap towards e-commerce enhancement. But in this war on e-commerce terrain, bricks and mortar retailers are least benefited.

And as a result of e-tailers' predatory pricing, traders have planned a legal action against it. They will move the Competition Commission of India (CCI) or the Supreme Court by the month-end against the e-commerce players over what they regard as predatory pricing, in case no action has been taken by the government on it.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) lobby group met commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday.

As per Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general, CAIT,"We will very soon move CCI or the apex court. Our lawyer is working on it. We will wait another week or so for the government to act on the matter before deciding on filing a competition complaint by month end," to which Nirmala Sitharaman assured that the issue would be taken under consideration and the government was committed to a fair and healthy business environment in the country. She said checks and balances are the basic fundamentals for the fair working of any sector.

Khandelwal said that there should be a check- whether the sellers are funded by the owners of the technology platform or if the manufacturers are giving products to online sellers at a different price than the offline market. CAIT asked the minister to take steps to monitor and regulate online businesses, to which he added,"We demand a regulatory body not only for e-commerce business but also for domestic trade of India". Sitharaman assured the traders that full consideration would be given to the formation of such a Board of Internal Trade.