Draft ecommerce policy likely out in few weeks

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Flipkart group, Amazon India and Tata Digital among others, the government has indicated that the draft ecommerce policy may be introduced in a few weeks, according to people aware of the discussion.ET had reported on August 1 that commerce minister Piyush Goyal would chair the meeting on Wednesday. Secretaries of the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT) Rajesh Kumar Singh and the department of consumer affairs Rohit Kumar Singh were also present.

“I think the government took a lot of inputs from ecommerce platforms during today’s discussions and a sense of comfort was there that policy would be holistic in nature. The timeline in the government's mind is about one to two weeks but the same is flexible,” a person aware of the matter said.

Another person aware of the discussions confirmed the same to ET. Flipkart group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Amazon India vice president and country manager Manish Tiwary and Tata Digital CEO Pratik Pal were among the attendees.

Senior executives including founders of firms like Shiprocket, Reliance, Swiggy, Meesho and others were also present.“It was a broad-based conversation across ecommerce, quick commerce and other sub-segments,” one of the people mentioned above said. Some of the key aspects discussed included alignment of the ecommerce policy with consumer protection rules and the government clearly distinguishing between the two models of online marketplaces and inventory-based businesses.