For those of you that look forward to Diwali and New Year discounts online each year, you're about to have a rude awakening.
According to new policy from the government, we might have seen the last of flash sales and deep discounts on sites like Flipkart and Amazon.
The rules are part of new foreign direct investment (FDI) regulations put into place by the Indian government, that aim to stop major ecommerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart from pricing local traders out of the market.
The new rules ban ecommerce sites from selling products from companies they have an equity interest in. In addition, they're now forbidden to enter into exclusivity agreements with sellers, like how certain smartphones are only sold on one platform or the other.
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The new rules will be come into effect from February 1.
"An entity having equity participation by e-commerce marketplace entity or its group companies, or having control on its inventory by e-commerce marketplace entity or its group companies, will not be permitted to sell its products on the platform run by such marketplace entity," the commerce ministry said in a statement.
The new regulations follow close on the heels of complaints from Indian retailers, who accuse the ecommerce giants of using their control over inventory from their affiliates to create an unfair marketplace that allows them to sell some products at very low prices.
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The All India Online Vendors Association (AIOVA) had filed a petition in October with the anti-trust body Competition Commission of India (CCI) against Amazon. The same body had also filed another earlier this May against Flipkart.
The rules don't specifically ban offers like cashbacks, discounts, or other. However, the government has indicated the process needs to be completely impartial in order to be allowed, and not dependent on whether the product is from the platform's affiliate.
It's a discussion that's been going on for years, ever since digital marketplaces first gained a foothold in India, with local traders worried they would be simply pushed out by predatory pricing, where giants are capable of massively lowering their profit margins to gain smaller traders' consumers.
So far, Flipkart has not yet commented on the issue, while Amazon has said it's still reviewing the new regulations.