Deep discounts might end as government proposes new e-commerce policy

NEW DELHI: The government is planning to lower discount rates to regulate e-commerce sector. This might become a sad news for the customers who shop online regularly.

On Monday, a draft e-commerce policy was discussed with the stakeholders for consultation. It has also stated that this policy is to be stopped from a specific date to regulate an efficient e-commerce sector. This policy is also going to cover food delivery sites such as Zomato and Swiggy and also online service aggregators like Urban Clap and financial and payment products platforms like Paytm and Policybazaar.

The aim of this policy is to gather multiple aspects in the legislation. Aspects like small and medium enterprises and mergers and acquisitions, consumer protection and grievance redressal to ownership, FDI, local storage of data. This draft will have an other revision before public consultations. The e-commerce market in our country is around $25 billion and is to go to $200 billion in the next decade.

An executive at one of the largest e-commerce companies said, “This will definitely impact our business, as the basic tenets of e-commerce business such as not spending on physical infrastructure enables us to pass on the cost savings to our consumers in the form of discounts.”

The draft policy suggests that discount curbs will not be limited only to the marketplace like Amazon and Flipkart but it would be extended to group companies. The government believes that many sellers on platforms like these have indirect shareholding from the marketplace operators. The policy would restricts brands from offering two sets of prices for the same product sold offline and online.

Though this policy is to ensure the regulation of this sector but it seems to be difficult to implement and many people believe that this step would effect on customers who are surfing e-commerce platforms for discounts on almost everything.