New norms for FDI in e-commerce

December 28, 2018

The new norms for the foreign direct investment (FDI) in e-commerce, bars e-commerce firms from selling products of entities in which they have an equity stake.

Why the new norms?

The new norms are brought in by the government to plug-in some loopholes like:

To bypass the rules which restricted large sellers on platforms such as Flipkart and Amazon from contributing more than a quarter of sales, online retailers had set up structures to get around those loopholes by mandating other sellers to buy from those large sellers and then, in turn, sell those products on e-marketplaces.
Large sellers formed multiple entities, which sold their products separately on online marketplaces.
The small traders were complaining that deep discounts offered by the likes of Amazon and Flipkart are driving them out of business.
The new norms aim to tackle the anti-competitive behaviour by e-commerce entities and to ensure that there is no wrong subsidization and the marketplace remains neutral to all vendors.

How will it affect e-commerce companies?

The impacts of the new norms are:

The e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart would be adversely affected because Amazon has several such joint ventures, including Cloudtail and Appario. Even Flipkart has exclusive partnerships with top smartphone brands such as Xiaomi and Oppo. The new norms will adversely impact their business models.
The critics blame that the new norms are not in sync with the spirit of competition and free market economy because Only those exclusive arrangements that have an appreciable adverse effect on competition are prohibited under the Competition Act.

The new norms are welcomed by stating that the new norms will enable a level- playing field for all sellers especially MSMEs and help them leverage the reach of e-commerce.

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