CAIT welcomes CCI's raid on Amazon's seller Cloudtail, Apario

New Delhi, April 28

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has complimented the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for conducting raids on the offices of Cloudtail and Apario, both sellers of Amazon.

It is a much awaited welcome step of CCI which will surely vindicate the substance of various complaints made by the CAIT against Amazon and Flipkart, said CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal, while commenting upon the action of the CCI.

Since past three years, the CAIT has been raising strong objections against alleged mal-practices of Amazon and Flipkart and filed complaints with CCI beside strongly fighting delaying tactics of Amazon and Flipkart in various courts as well.

Khandelwal, in a statement said that role of Narayan Murthy should also be investigated while conducting raid.

The situation demands that all the records in paper and computers of both the sellers pertaining to the complaints of should be confiscated so that these can not be tempered.

"The seizure of records will amply substantiate the charges made by CAIT against Amazon and Appario. Beside, these two sellers, other top 20 sellers of Amazon in last five years, should also be properly scanned since Amazon is flouting all laws and FDI policy of the Government and trying to creating a monopolistic market in India since a long time and there is no transparency on Amazon e-commerce portal thereby causing huge damage to small retailers of the country and collateral damage to the consumers," said the statement.

The trade body further said that predatory pricing, deep discounting, loss funding, exclusive sale of branded products in collusion with respective corporate companies, owing inventory are some of the fundamental issues raised by the CAIT."All these practices are explicitly prohibited under Press Note 2 of FDI policy of 2018," the statement added.

Biggest hit verticals due to mal-practice of Amazon and Flipkart include Mobile, FMCG, Consumer Durables, clothing, Readymade Garments, Beauty care products, Watches, Gift items, and furnishing fabric, it said.