Many big e-commerce companies have flagrantly broken the law: Union Minister Piyush Goyal

As many of those large online firms have inherit India and “very” blatantly flouted the laws of the land, in additional ways than one, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said on Saturday that each one e – commerce companies should follow the laws of this country and not use muscle or money and power to harm Indian interests.

He claims that a lot of of those businesses’ activities are harmful to consumers, which the govt has just released proposed guidelines for e-commerce enterprises or marketplace models that apply to all or any organisations, including Indians.

“The Indian market is big and we welcome all players to come and participate.” the minister said. He added further, “Unfortunately, many of these large e-commerce companies have come into India and very blatantly flouted the laws of the land, in more ways than one,” the union minister said.

“I have had several engagements with these large companies, particularly the American ones, I can see a little bit of arrogance of their being big and their ability to finance large amounts of money…to try and capture the Indian market or larger part of the Indian market particularly certain products to the detriment of our mom and pop stores,” the minister added.

Goyal believes it’s “very” unfair that they ought to be permitted to harm domestic interests or domestic consumers just because they’re huge and have enormous pools of low-cost capital.
“So, I think it will be good if all companies follow the land of the land and do not use muscle power or money power to try and hurt Indian interests,” he added.

Goyal recalled one among his comments on an announcement of an ecommerce behemoth spending USD 1 billion in India, saying that the business was doing so because it had lost money within the preceding two years.

In January 2020, the minister claimed that Jeff Bezos’s company, Amazon, wasn’t doing the country any favours by investing, and questioned how the web retailing behemoth could have incurred such large losses if not for its predatory pricing.

They must invest it because the corporation utilised the funds to interact in predatory pricing, likely subsidising some items and capturing a much bigger a part of the market at the expense of small mom and pop shops, he explained.

“…and when questions about it keep fobbing off, they keep delaying the information, and when people object to the CCI (Competition Commission of India), they immediately start forum shopping in the law courts of India.”
Minister questioned them that if they are engaged in only ethical business practice and have nothing to hide then don’t they respond to the CCI.

The fact that they are trying to urge around it definitely justifies predatory pricing, he added. They’re attempting to influence market behaviour, and their algorithms are trying to influence customer choice, both of which are illegal in India.

“Now clearly the planet is awakening to the realities of those large tech and large ecommerce companies,” he said, adding that several countries, including the us , are performing on antitrust laws for e-commerce, and therefore the UK’s competition and market authority has opened investigations into big tech, primarily US forms.

“We in India have about 60 million mom and pop stores spread across the country… Today it may not look threating. One can say how these companies would impact the villages, how will they reach out everywhere, but the strength money power, technology and their ability to sustain for long period of time, does not pose risk to nearly 100 million people…engaged in…small retail stores across the country.”