Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is attempting to draw a clear distinction between the marketplace model and the inventory-based model with the upcoming ecommerce policy. Furthermore, the policy is likely to restrict ecommerce marketplaces from selling third-party products on their platforms.
According to a Business Standard report, the DPIIT informed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce that the conflict of interest that arises due to e-marketplace entities’ control of vendors’ inventory would be addressed in the proposed policy. The committee suggested that the two models, inventory-led and marketplace, be clearly defined in order to address competition-related issues such as deep discounting, a lack of platform neutrality, platform data misuse, and nontransparent search ranking.
