Digital Platforms and E-Commerce in India – Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

The laws regulating an e-commerce entity have been completely reluctant in India and; are at a very nascent stage. The fast growth of e-commerce has played a significant role in increasing market competitiveness and; today, e-commerce has connected the rural economies to integrate faster with the national economy. The reach of e-commerce in the sub-rural and rural areas (around 100-200 million Indians) has provided multiple choices and e-commerce has granted distinctive expansion prospects to the retail industry from an earlier completely diverse industry – the brick-and-mortar physical stores. Today, sellers have reached around 22,000 PIN codes to the oddest of places. The Indian retail industry (brick-and-mortar stores) accounts for over 10% of the country’s GDP and around 8% of the employment, which may be a threat of loss if unable to shift to an e-commerce model. With the emerging e-commerce growth, where on one side, buyers and local sellers have benefited from the easy purchase and sell facilities, on the other side, offline market players have faced a setback. In this paper, we have talked about legal technicalities involved in regulating an e-commerce entity in the relevant market. The present market condition has later been discussed which has become a battleground, where not only the players of the offline retailers are against the e-commerce entities, but e-commerce entities are competing amongst themselves, at the cost of violating laws through the innovative ‘two-way companies model’. In the end, few observations and key takeaways have been jotted down for the kind consideration of the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

Keywords: Competition Law, e-commerce, FDI, Indian Laws, Amazon-Flipkart, India