FAIITA and Brand Owners root for Zero Tolerance for price disruption by OLS

With the emergence of E-commerce, the price tussle between OLS and brick and mortar stores is growing every day. The issue of predatory pricing by OLS has been a long persisting issue for the brick and mortar. Since the inception of FAIITA (Federation of All India Information Technology Associations), the federation has been fighting continuously against it to protect the interest of the retail stores.

This year before the festive time, to take a proactive action against the predatory pricing by OLS, FAIITA and the Brand Owners like HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus and Acer have come to a consensus that predatory pricing of the online retail would not be tolerated. The meeting was organized by PCAIT in New Delhi. The context of the meeting was based on apprehension on the prices being disrupted by OLS.

Saket Kapur, General Secretary FAIITA comments, “All the five brands have expressed total support to the association and they have ensured zero tolerance complied with any kind of price distribution. Zero tolerance before the judgement by Delhi High Court was not possible. The judgement which comes about two months back has inspired us to go for zero tolerance.”

Another major progress that helped the federation to take this step is the judgement of Delhi High Court of Amway versus Flipkart and Amazon which clearly interprets the Information Technology Act 2000 that as a mediator (seller) also is liable for any kind of price disruption. It means any brand owner under the IPR Act can stop under law any seller from discounting heavily.

All Brand Owners have agreed to follow concerns tabled by FAIITA on behalf of pan India B&M:

* ‘Zero Tolerance’ to online led disruption, disruption anytime, especially during forthcoming festive season

* Details related to SKUs Models, Quantity sold to or will sell to Online for their planned forthcoming festive sales and likely price shall be shared with secretary FAIITA or their respective authorised channel in advance

* Models, SKUs, Derivatives and specifications and availability of all products will remain same from customer perspective across all GTMs

* As far as possible frequent and immediate price drop on products carried by B&M shall be avoided by Brand Owners

* HP supplies have taken initiatives and planned some more to uniquely identify and distinguish any toner from counterfeit and ensure to protect the credibility of their channel partner

* MRP of all products will be same across all GTMs, and Online will not be permitted to publish deceptively escalated MRP and significant discount offered thereby

Alok Gupta, President, PCAIT, says, “Every time we used to move one step ahead. Initially the law of the land was not so strict so they used to get away by saying that we are unable to handle it. It’s only from last three years they have acknowledged of handling it. Last to last year they have shared a mail with us where they showed the concern about the online retailers, second year compensation this year zero tolerance. For three years we have reached here.”