CAIT to take legal recourse against Walmart-Flipkart deal

By

Maverick Martins

Published
May 17, 2018

The $16 billion Walmart-Flipkart deal has not gone down well with the sellers and traders in India, with the latter now planning to take legal recourse against the firms at appropriate authorities. 

Earlier, the sellers body AIOVA (All India Online Vendors Association) has expressed its displeasure over the deal and lack of government action on the same. CAIT also feels that the deal is a violation of the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy and preparing a battery of lawyers to present their case.

The traders fear that the deal will give Walmart a back entry through e-commerce into the offline trade thereby hampering the business of several traders across the country.

"The Flipkart-Walmart agreement is circumventing laws and will offend FDI policy once it is implemented and will create an uneven level playing field beside accomplishing hidden agenda of Walmart to reach out to offline trade through e-commerce way," the confederation said in a statement.

“Government should closely monitor each passage of the deal since its not a merger of two companies but will have greater ramifications on retail trade and economy,” it added.

“There has to be a policy for such deals otherwise in lust of bigger profit several such deals will happen in future and will be a bad preceden. Slowly and gradually the Indian retail trade will be controlled and dominated by the MNCs and an era of predatory pricing, deep discounting and loss funding will prevail to wipe out the competition which will create an unhealthy market," CAIT further added.