After having pulled up two major foreign players in the e-commerce segment, the government has now reportedly sent questionnaires to Paytm and Snapdeal on the various policies and practices adopted by them.
It may be recalled that after a series of meetings at the Commerce Ministry including with minister Piyush Goyal himself, e-commerce firms were sent questionnaires by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). The queries largely centred around the arrangement between the companies and the sellers on their respective platforms.
Since the whole exercise was in response to the complaints received by the government from the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), that these companies were engaged in deep discounting practice, the questions were related to these. So, the questions were aimed at collecting information on the top five sellers, how much business they were doing on the platform and if there were differential commission arrangements with the sellers and so on.
The questionnaire sent to Snapdeal and Paytm has a few changes, from the ones sent to Flipkart and Amazon, it is learnt. The firms seem to have confirmed the development and have already sent in the questionnaires duly filled with their responses. DPIIT appears to be keen an establishing the truth in the charge that the sellers on the platform are involved with the companies in offering the deep discounts.
The issue may have to be seen from two different perspectives; one is the contravention of the FDI norms which will be seen through the FEMA prism and the other will be trade malpractices etc. which will come under the purview of the Competition Commission of India.
The firms will now await the response from the DPIIT to know if their answers were found satisfactory by the department.