The Indian offline retailers and industry association Confederation of All India Traders have always been up against the online marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart and others for unfair market practices and deep discounting. There have been numerous times when the two have clashed in courts regarding these issues.
But recently, in a bid to compete fairly with the online retailers, the CAIT has clubbed with offline retailers to launch their own E-commerce platform “Bharatmarket”. The platform aims to help offline retail sellers to sell their products online without having a middleman.
As per various media reports, the domain has already been secured and the association plans to go live with the website in coming weeks.
The website is promising to enroll about 1Cr retailers on the platform in the early months of its initiation. The association is planning to initially launch the service in cities like Prayagraj, Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Lucknow, Kanpur, and Bengaluru. With time, it will be rolled out to more cities.
“The portal is a byproduct of experiences gained by Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) while working with DPIIT to ensure supply of essential goods in containment zones during the periods of lockdown,” said Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary-General, CAIT.
The business model of this e-commerce portal will be similar to how Reliance aims to operate its JioMart. Sellers will not be charged any commission for selling through this portal.
The website is likely to be developed by the Indian government. So, it will be interesting to see how it will manage to compete against rivals.
This move was long expected after e-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon started giving preferences to their partners and sellers. Back in December 2018, Indian govern int announced the policy that prohibits e-commerce platforms from any preferential treatment to any supplier. The government has also limited any single vendor revenue on any e-commerce platform up to 25%. But e-commerce stores always find loopholes.
HrNxt.com Newsdesk has researchers and writers with an excellent domain knowledge about the talent ecosystem, and the business environment. The team keeps a tab on the latest happenings in the ecosystem to bring most relevant news and insights for our readers. You can connect with our newsdesk at newsdesk@hrnxt.com.