The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), representing about 70 million traders of the country, has acknowledged the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for conducting raids on the offices of Cloudtail and Appario, both sellers of e-commerce giant Amazon.
India's antitrust body has reportedly launched raids against the two top domestic sellers of Amazon over accusations of violating competition laws. Prione Business Services houses Cloudtail, one of the largest retailers on the e-commerce firm’s Indian platform. Another seller, Appario Retail is a subsidiary of Frontizo, which is a joint venture between Amazon and the Patni Group.
The raids are related to the allegations of anti-competitive conduct such as giving deep discounts on online sales of smartphones, and cherry-picking sellers. Other allegations included predatory pricing and exclusive partnerships.
CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said, “It is a much-awaited welcome step of CCI which will surely vindicate the substance of various complaints made by the CAIT against Amazon and Flipkart.”
CAIT National President B C Bhartia and Khandelwal, and National Secretary Sumit Agarwal, in a joint statement, said the situation demands that all the records on paper and computers of both the sellers pertaining to the complaints should be confiscated so that these cannot be tempered. The seizure of records will amply substantiate the charges made by CAIT against Amazon and Appario.
Bhartia, Khandelwal and Agarwal also alleged that these two sellers and other top 20 sellers of Amazon in the last 5 years, should also be properly scanned since Amazon is flouting all laws and FDI (foreign direct investment) policy of the Government. The CAIT has been raising strong objections against the malpractices of Amazon and Flipkart from the past three years, and filed complaints with CCI.
See What’s Next in Tech With the Fast Forward Newsletter
Tweets From @varindiamag
Nothing to see here - yet
When they Tweet, their Tweets will show up here.
