Indias competition watchdog has moved to the Supreme Court seeking control over multiple legal challenges that aim to stop its e-commerce probe (notice missing apostrophe)
The Competition Commission filed papers in early-Dec asking to merge 23 different court cases‚ which were started by Samsung‚ Vivo and various online sellers. These companies dont want the watchdog to look into their business deals with online shops
E-commerce is huge in India - experts say online sales will jump from todays $57-60bn to about $160bn by 2028; which makes this investigation super-important. The probe found that Amazon and Flipkart helped only some sellers‚ while phone makers like Samsung and Vivo worked with them to sell stuff only online
The watchdog found out in Aug-2024 that these big-name companies broke competition rules: they made deals that werenʼt fair to other sellers. Small shop owners have been saying this for years - that these web-stores give unfair price-cuts to certain sellers
- Local shops say they cant compete with online prices
- Big companies deny doing anything wrong
- Five different courts are handling these cases now
- Companies say the watchdog didnt follow proper steps
A news report from about 3 years ago showed Amazon had some special deals with certain sellers (which went against local rules). The investigation started in late-2020 but kept getting delayed because of legal stuff
The Supreme Court might look at this mega-case this week: its going to decide if all these separate cases should be handled together