CCI takes aim at e-commerce—will it hit?

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Editor's note: Ashok Kumar Gupta, the chairman of the Competition Commission of India, or CCI, in an interview last week waded into the murky waters of e-commerce regulation in India. The background was the release of the antitrust agency’s “Market Study on e-Commerce in India: Key Findings & Observations” that same week. The report, based on a seven-month study, makes detailed observations on the business model and practices of retail e-commerce platforms, foodtech firms and online travel agencies in India. All of these companies have been locked in disputes with their partners: e-commerce companies with sellers and retailers; foodtech companies with restaurants; travel agencies with hotels. The complaints against the platforms are largely the same: they favour some partners/sellers over others (or even run their own), the pressure to discount is excessive and search and ranking algorithms are opaque. In online retail particularly, which we shall analyse in detail, the Indian government has repeatedly intervened to restrict how Flipkart and Amazon India function after allegations from online sellers and offline trade associations of unfair treatment and violations of foreign investment norms. For …