This may be the biggest threat to India’s e-commerce industry
NEW DELHI: It should have been like K Street (a US TV series on powerful lobbyist firms). But it’s become Game of Thrones (another US TV series, on powerful royals fighting each other, not realizing there’s a bigger danger).
India’s e-commerce blue chips are disunited and fractious, even when confronted with a constricting set of central government rules – the April-announced policy on e-tailers and marketplaces – and various state-level taxation threats.
This is a more serious fight than Twitter put-downs, for example, those exchanged by Flipkart ‘s Sachin Bansal and Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl.
Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal , ShopClues and others face a determined and united brick-and-mortar retailers’ group, Retailers Association of India (RAI), but the stars of e-commerce can’t lobby the government with one voice. And the impact of this on the e-tailing business is at best uncertain. ET spoke to a wide range of people from the e-commerce industry for this story. Many of them spoke on the condition they not be identified. Amazon and Flipkart did not respond to questions.
Snapdeal responded, saying the company is working with all stakeholders on all important issues. “Brick-and-mortar retailers are a huge cartel, they will not even sell a bottle of water below an agreed price, unlike us,” a senior executive at a top e-tailer told ET, explaining the basic difference in online and offline retail trade. Radhika Aggarwal, co-founder of ShopClues.com, which gets funding from Tiger Global and Nexus Ventures among others, has a sharp take: “This is like the Game of Thrones as every house is trying to consolidate according to its strength. We are a fragmented lot.”
The fragmentation can be striking. Early April, Amazon got the lobby group Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) to draft a letter asking the government for six months’ moratorium on the marketplace policy’s implementation. But Flipkart and Snapdeal refused to sign it. People familiar with this matter told ET that the e-tailers promoted by Indians refused to sign because they thought US-based Amazon would benefit most from a policy postponement. IAMAI did not send a letter.
That a lobby group could not even send a united petition is remarkable, say those knowledgeable about government-industry relations. A senior executive of a large e-tailer was candid: “It is true we hate each other, it is beginning to hurt. There should be a joint, concerted effort. Why are brick-and-mortar players successful in lobbying? Because they speak in one voice.”
Divisions among etailers are getting sharper. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, as ET reported, had lobbied Prime Minister Narendra Modi when the latter visited the US earlier this month. Bezos reportedly asked for a hybrid model for foreign promoter-backed e-tailers. A hybrid model would allow online retailing where a platform sources, stocks and sells merchandise itself while also allowing other retailers to sell through it.
Flipkart and Snapdeal are ferociously opposed to Bezos’s idea, four senior executives from these two companies told ET. Homegrown etailers say they reckon Bezos will find it tough to get his way but if he does, Amazon can pose a huge threat.
“Amazon wants FDI in hybrid model so that they can embark on a scorched earth policy by discounting indiscriminately which no player will be able to counter because no one has excess cash to burn any more,” says a person familiar with Flipkart’s thinking. He also explained Flipkart’s constraints: “Flipkart is pivoted to marketplace model now even if purely by default. If they have to go back to the inventory model, it will be a gut-wrenching change which the company won’t be able to bear. Amazon on the other hand is a veteran of the inventory model globally and would welcome it.”
Homegrown e-commerce stars happily point out to Amazon’s “struggle” to comply with the new rules of online marketplace – any venture that has FDI cannot have any one vendor selling more than 25% of total sales by value. Senior executives of these e-tailers claim Amazon’s joint venture entity, Cloudtail, currently sells well above the 25% threshold.
Such sniping is common and the contrast with the offline retailers’ lobby group, RAI, cannot be starker – two cases have been filed by brick-and-mortar retailers since May last year accusing e-commerce companies of circumventing Indian laws and it was those lawsuits that forced the government to write the new online marketplace rules. More’s on the way. RAI members, ET has learnt, are investigating what they see as noncompliance of e-tailers with new marketplace rules. RAI is updated by its members about e-tailers’ special deals, pricing behavior and discounts.
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