10 lakh traders from 500 cities stage protect today against Walmart-Flipkart deal

New Delhi, July 2 (KNN) As many as 10 lakh traders, both online and offline, from across 500 cities in the country held protest against the Walmart-Flipkart deal raising concern over "unfair competition" due to the collaboration. 

Large number of traders across the country have staged protest against this deal under the umbrella of the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) demanding the Government to scrap the deal since it will prove much against the interests of retail trade and economy of India.

In Delhi, the protest was held at prominent commercial market Karol Bagh whereas similar protests were held at Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Surat, Ahemadabad, Bhopal, Chennai, Hyderabad, Banglore, Pondicherry, Raipur, Rourkela, Ranchi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad, Jhansi and at other cities in the Country.

Apart from demanding to scarp this deal, the protestors across the country asked the government to immediately formulate a policy on E Commerce and constitute a Regulatory Authority to regulate and monitor the e commerce market of the Country.

In this regard, CAIT said, “if this issue is not addressed immediately, the traders of the country will decide future course of action in National Convention of CAIT to be held at Delhi from 23rd July to 25th July.”

Strongly objecting the merger of two big companies CAIT National President B.C.Bhartia & Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said that Walmart which is world's largest retailer will create an unfair competition and uneven level playing field and will indulge in predatory pricing, deep discounts and loss funding.

They further added that the Flipkart is a combination of predation, exclusive tie-ups and of preferential sellers where even online vendors face discriminatory conditions and Walmart being the owner by virtue of 77% share is bound to give preference to its inventory.

There will be denial of market access to non preferred sellers coupled with complete destruction of small time traders on offline platform, they added.

With the merger of two, their market share would rise exponentially and pure offline retailers / wholesalers would have two options either exit the market or sell their goods on filpkart.com and face discriminatory terms and conditions from flipkart in comparison to its preferred sellers, said CAIT.

This will create an unhealthy competition much to the disadvantage of both offline and online sellers, it added.

Calling Walmart another version of The East India Company, CAIT said that it is highly regretted that some of the people for just merely earning the profit have sold major chunk of e commerce to Walmart.

It will source globally the cheapest material and will dump in the Country to wipe out the Competition. Sadly as of now no rule or law exist which can put restrictions on such practices of any Company, CAIT pointed.

Explaining the effects of this collaboration on small traders, CAIT leaders said that access to vast resources of data to be used for targeted advertisements for consumers as also creating private label and sell the same through preferred sellers.

This transaction would result in vertical integration which no other player in India would have and in the absence of any policy on e-commerce or retail trade, it would be easy for Walmart to reach out to retail market, which otherwise it cannot enter due to FDI policy, traders body said.

The said transaction would result in removal of several competitor or competitors in the market and would soften the competition, to a great extent, CAIT added.