Quick-commerce players should come clean on their pricing game

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A few years ago, retailers had protested the ways of private online platforms. Small shops claimed to be victims of a power imbalance, one that India’s 2022-launched ONDC was expected to help redress.

If last week’s complaint by product distributors evokes a sense of déjà vu, it’s because a charge of predatory pricing has been levelled again, this time against quick-commerce firms. The All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation (AICPDF), which represents some 400,000 entities that distribute fast-selling stuff made by major companies, wants the Competition Commission of India to probe quick-delivery players like Zepto, Zomato’s Blinkit and Swiggy’s Instamart for their alleged violation of rivalry rules by selling wares at unfairly low prices to lure customers through pricing policies that could drive other channels out of business. The AICPDF’s letter to India’s antitrust authority not only states that quick-commerce firms have begun dealing directly with many manufacturers, putting the survival of regular retailers at threat, but also alleges that significant control of inventory at dark stores amounts to a violation of law.

Networks of dark store-houses have enabled quick-commerce leaders to home-deliver groceries within spans as short as 15 minutes and the rapid adoption of these zippy services may have been at the cost of neighbourhood shops to a significant extent. The legal status of these stores may need a look-in. But if this format finds itself under an antitrust lens, its legitimate factors of success must not get mixed up with muscles flexed to bully the market.