Are Amazon, Flipkart promoting low-quality or faux items? Corporations face raids in India over these allegations – Firstpost

India’s authorities has stepped up its scrutiny of Amazon and Flipkart after raiding warehouses operated by the e-commerce giants in Delhi, seizing merchandise that allegedly failed to satisfy nationwide high quality management requirements.

The Bureau of Indian Requirements (BIS), the nation’s product certification authority, mentioned the raids are a part of a wider marketing campaign to implement compliance with labelling and security norms.

Gadgets together with geysers and meals mixers price round Rs 7 million (roughly $81,500) had been confiscated from a warehouse operated by an Amazon subsidiary, the company mentioned. The merchandise both lacked the obligatory high quality certification mark or bore counterfeit labels.

In a separate motion, BIS officers seized almost Rs 600,000 ($7,000) price of sports activities footwear from a Flipkart unit in Delhi. The footwear had been reportedly packed and prepared for dispatch however didn’t carry the required certification markings.

The seizures observe related raids earlier this month at Amazon and Flipkart amenities within the southern state of Tamil Nadu. There too, BIS alleged that the companies had been storing and promoting items with out adhering to obligatory requirements.

Amazon India mentioned the agency is “engaged intently with numerous stakeholders, together with regulators.”

Each Amazon and Flipkart are dominant gamers in India’s e-commerce market which, in keeping with estimates by consultancy agency Bain, was price between $57 billion and $60 billion in 2023, and will prime $160 billion in worth by 2028.

However their speedy development has additionally drawn the eye of Indian regulators. In September, the nation’s antitrust watchdog discovered each firms had violated competitors legal guidelines by favouring choose sellers on their platforms– a longstanding concern of small merchants and rivals within the retail house.

Amazon has confronted further allegations of skirting native legal guidelines. A 2021 investigation by Reuters, primarily based on inner Amazon paperwork, claimed the corporate had for years given preferential remedy to a small group of sellers and used them to bypass Indian restrictions.

With inputs from companies