New Ecommerce Policy: Flipkart Warns Of Disruption If Not Delayed; Snapdeal Says Implement Now

Entire Indian ecommerce industry has divided into two groups over the new ecommerce policy, announced by the Govt.

On one side is Flipkart and Amazon, both owned by Americans, having pumped in billions of dollars into their Indian operations. They want the implementation to be delayed.

On the other side are India-born ecommerce portals Snapdeal and Shopclues, which wants an immediate implementation of the new ecommerce policy.

Both have approached the Govt., and well, things stand dicey as of now.

Flipkart: Massive Disruption If New Policy Is Implemented

Flipkart, which is now owned by Walmart, has warned of massive customer disruption if the new ecommerce policy is implemented on February 1st.

In a letter to the Industries and Commerce Ministry,  Flipkart Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy has warned of “significant customer disruption”, if the implementation is not delayed.

As per Kalyan, the new policies would require significant technological and operational changes, and it would need time.

He said, “Redesigning numerous elements of our technology systems to ensure that we can validate and evidence our compliance, in such a compressed period of time, has caused us to divert significant resources,”

While Walmart has spent Rs 1.2 lakh crore to acquire Flipkart, Amazon has spent approximately Rs 35,000 crore to create their presence.

Snapdeal, Shopclues: Implement The New Policy Now

Meanwhile, India-born ecommerce portals Snapdeal and Shopclues have written to the Govt. over the new ecommerce policy and have appealed to implement the same immediately.

Snapdeal co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl, has written to Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu, and have said that if the new ecommerce policy is not implemented from February 1st, and delayed, then it will lead to more FDI violations, and harm the nation.

He said that the campaign to delay the implementation by some ‘parties’ is an “orchestrated move” which is meant to pressurize authorities and “needs to be resisted strongly”.

He even said that their technical teams have already implemented the new changes, as mentioned in the Press Note 2.

Shopclues too have echoed these sentiments, and have appealed to the Govt. to implement the new ecommerce policy without any delay.

In case the new ecommerce policy is implemented, ecommerce portals with FDI cannot sell via their own vendors, their own labels, cannot announce massive discount days and lot more restrictions will be in place.

It would be interesting to observe how Govt. reacts now.

Do you think that the new ecommerce policy is fair to the ecommerce portals? Do let us know by commenting right here!