Industry Bodies Urge ‘Probe’ & ‘Intervention’ Against Amazon, Again

In a recent development Amazon India has been accused of copying sellers’ products and rigging the search results. According to the reuters findings, "company ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoffs and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines in India". 

These findings directly contradict Amazon’s previous messaging around how it develops its private label products. For many years now, Amazon has its own private-label goods under the AmazonBasics branding, which offers everything from furniture to clothing. It also offers private label products under other brand names.

Condemning the unfair business practices, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) enquiry, against Amazon for violations of Indian business regulations.  

CAIT in a statement said, "Repeated statements of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal that everyone doing business in the Country will have to follow and comply with the laws and rules of the Country both in letter and spirit, but it has no effect on Amazon."

CAIT National President B C Bhartia and Secretary-General, Praveen Khandelwal in a joint statement said that copying the products and rigging the search is a grievous offence. 

The trade body alleged that with an ulterior design e-commerce giant is trying to destroy the domestic small manufacturers and traders of India directly contravening the Atma Nirbhar Bharat vision of PM Modi. 

"India is not the only country where Amazon is violating the law. In fact, it is penalised by several countries for various offences prominently among them is the imposition of a fine of 886.6 million USD by the European Union (EU) in July 2021, 35 million Euro by France in 2020 and 134,523 US dollars by the Treasury Department of the USA in 2020," the joint statement added.  

In response to Reuters report, Alliance of Digital India Foundation (AIDF) also said that we condemns Amazon’s predatory playbook of copying, rigging and killing Indian brands, urges Government for timely intervention.

Sijo Kuruvilla George, Executive Director, ADIF said that "The manner in which the e-commerce giant has targeted the Indian market and leading brands in the country is highly deplorable and brings into question the credibility of Amazon as a good faith operator in the Indian startup ecosystem."

"Amazon taking advantage of consumer data that they are in possession of, using that information to the detriment of the brands and sellers that helped generate the data in the first place, and then rigging search results to further hurt the original brands is an economic offense of the highest order, one that has destructive consequences for markets and falls foul of fair competition practices." he added.

Demanding for Data protection laws, the statement reads, "This development also brings to attention the significance and importance of good data protection laws for the health and prosperity of digital markets."