Six Lakh Indian Vendors and SMEs Gather to Launch ‘Asmbhav’ Summit to Speak Out Against Practices by Overseas E-Com Merchants | Odisha News | Odisha Latest News
New Delhi: Representatives and supporters from over 6,00,000 Indian small traders, distributors and merchants, both offline and online, have come together to launch a unique event titled ‘asmbhav Summit’ ‘asmbhav‘ or ‘impossible’, expresses the belief of sellers that until such time as India continues to allow foreign retailers to pose as marketplaces and platforms in India, success for small Indian sellers would be impossible.
The Asmbhav event is held concurrently with Amazon’s Smbhav 2021 event, which is said to be positioned as a friend and guide for its small sellers and trading partners.
Asmbhav Summit goes live on April 15, 2021, providing an important forum for participants whose lives and livelihoods have been impacted by the highly discriminatory and harassing attitudes of foreign e-commerce retailers posing as marketplaces to collectively voice their voice against to raise these partisan practices and impress on the government the need for urgent regulatory and legal intervention.
The summit seeks to bring to foreign retailers posing as marketplaces the serious complaints made by merchants and the various challenges they face when selling online.
The summit is organized by an Indian vendors collective that includes organizations such as AIOVA (All India Online Vendors Association), All-India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA), PRAHAR (Public Response Against Helplessness and Action for Redressal), AICPD (All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation), FAIDA (Federation of All India Distributors associations)and FMCG Distributors & Traders Association, Delhi.
The summit has a keynote discussion with dr Ashwani Mahajan by Swadeshi Jagran Manch followed by a series of panel discussions and presentations and finally culminating in the Asmbhav Awards recognizing the destructive contribution of individuals against the business interests of small Indian vendors and traders.
AIMRA’s Arvinder Khurana along with the AIOVA spokesperson; Dhairyashil Patil of the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation (AICPDF); Abhay Raj Mishra of Public Response Against Helplessness and Action for Redressal (PRAHAR); Devendra Agarwal from the FMCG Distributors and Traders Association; Shriram Baxi from the Federation of All India Distributors Associations (FAIDA); IT for Change’s Parminder Singh; and dr Ganeshvaran, President of the TN Distributors Association take part in a panel discussion ‘Need for stronger e-commerce policy to control wrong practices of foreign entrants in India.’
The Union government is working on a draft e-commerce policy, which is expected shortly. Small merchants, who are really being hit the hardest by the upheaval in the e-commerce market, hope the government will allow enough safeguards and protections in this policy update. In fact, the event is dedicated to raising awareness of policy loopholes exploited by multinational e-commerce platforms today.
Top legal experts including Abir Roy from Sarvada Legal, MM Sharma from Vaish LAW, Pranav Sachdeva, Advocate on Record, Supreme Court, and Shri Krishna from FAIDA exchange views in a political panel discussion on “Political loopholes exploited by foreign e-commerce marketplaces to destroy small seller business in India..
According to Mr. Arvinder Khurana, President of AIMRA, “As Indians, our mobile retailers deserve a level and fair playing field. This is just a pipe dream today due to the nefarious practices of the major foreign retailers running platforms. First, these global retailers on the one hand affiliate directly with leading wireless brands and on the other engage their own selected resellers, who are none other than their related parties, to sell these brands on an exclusive basis. Such connections are both illegal and monopolistic. Due to these abuses, thousands of retailers across India are facing unbearable losses and their livelihoods are threatened. We appeal to the government not to allow foreign retailers to operate marketplaces as these companies have their very intent and intent to operate a retail operation on behalf of a marketplace.”
According to the AIOVA spokesperson, “We have seen our members selling on the platforms suffer from lack of business and as a result, in many tragic cases, have eventually been forced to close shop. There are huge conflicts of interest, inequalities, lack of collective rights, dispute resolution mechanisms and high selling fees. We hope to bring this glaring fact into focus before both the government and the public. Our “Asmbhav” summit brings into focus and publicity the open secret of the lack and lack of regulation of platforms and their behavior towards companies, which has allowed them to exploit vendors and their businesses. This needs to be investigated and stopped immediately.”
According to Mr. Abhay Raj Mishra, PRAHAR, “The pandemic has witnessed massive livelihood destruction in India, with the trading and merchant community severely affected. Contributing to the destruction has been the diversion of business from offline sellers to online sellers during the pandemic. Unfortunately, the small sellers have not benefited from the online sales boom as the revenue has been accumulated by the 5-6 related parties that operate 90% in marketplaces owned by foreign retailers. Amazon Summit Smbhav gives a misleading picture of helping hundreds of thousands of sellers when in reality there are only half a dozen beneficiaries. This is a different kind of capitalism, depriving petty traders of their livelihoods who must be arrested immediately.”
On that occasion, Mr. Dhairyashil Patil, National President of AICPDF stated: “In India, the current FDI norms prohibit e-commerce companies from owning or controlling the inventory of sellers on their platform. Through gross misconduct and law-bending, marketplace companies masquerading as platforms have wreaked havoc on their trading partners. We are very confident that the Asmbhav event will serve as a forum for action and unity for our silent and suffering majority and also promote the promulgation of a strict FDI e-commerce policy to protect Indian interests.”
The new FDI policy regarding e-commerce platforms is eagerly awaited by small traders who expect it to be strong and fair. Otherwise, the foreign e-commerce companies would continue to accumulate wealth for themselves and their related parties at the expense of small sellers. Therefore, it is extremely important that events like Asmbhav take place successfully and significantly escalate awareness of the mispractices of foreign platforms in the deceptive guise of marketplaces, thereby helping to save millions of livelihoods and jobs that depend on the survival of small sellers.
Comments are closed.