Dhanteras ahead, Indians burn effigies of foreign e-tailers

In India, offline retailers burned effigies of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on November 1 as part of their campaign ‘Bharat Chhodo Morcha’ to boycott foreign-owned e-commerce brands. As part of the protests, organizations such as Indian Sellers Collective, Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, and All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation exhorted the government and consumers to shun multinational brands and support local retailers.

Sellers claim retailers use their platforms to track bestselling products and build private brand products based on their designs at a competitive price. In addition, the sellers allege that these e-tailers use systematic marketing campaigns to divert sales of bestselling products on their platforms to their own lines.

In India, MNCs engaged in illegal business practices. Through front companies like Appario Retail, they engage in predatory pricing and discounting, destroying the businesses of offline retailers and small sellers. Aside from manipulating algorithms to promote their own brands and private labels, MNCs also influence the Indian judiciary to change laws to suit their interests.

For the past few years, foreign e-commerce retailers have taken over the sheen of Dhanteras for small retailers. Indian Sellers Collective has undertaken a nationwide campaign to get consumers and the government to shun products of foreign e-commerce companies and embrace products of Indian firms, claiming that repeated attempts for these companies to change their unethical business practices have fallen on deaf ears. At the same time, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is conducting its own investigation against Amazon and Flipkart under Section 3 of the Competition Act.

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‘The growth of small retailers has been inhibited by the dominance of MNC e-commerce companies. Large discounts put small retailers at risk. Small retailers today face livelihood challenges and are forced to operate on wafer-thin margins or no margins at all to survive,’ says Dr. P.M. Ganeshraam, National Chief Patron of the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation (AICPDF). During this festive season, both the government and consumers were urged to buy only from Indian sellers.