Small e-commerce players’ Budget wishlist

India’s e-commerce market is not all about big players like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon. While the Big Three have powerful financial backers to bankroll them despite losses, a clutch of smaller players and start ups are banking on the government to give their business a boost in the upcoming Union Budget.

"I am hoping the government will roll out measures to reduce the bureaucracy and unnecessary paperwork borne by start-ups at their inception. I also hope they create a more start-up friendly tax regime by implementing initiatives like waiving off service tax for the first 2-3 years,” said Sanna Vohra - CEO & Founder of Indear.in about her expectations of the Budget.

FDI in the Business to Consumer format of e-commerce is still a grey area. Not surprisingly there is a demand that the government clarify its stand on FDI in e-commerce and start ups. Among those making this demand is women’s fashion e-tailer yellowfashion.in

Darshan Patodi , co-founder of yellowfashion.in said, "Clarity regarding FDI policies is long due. In this budget we are looking forward to have a deep clarity on the same. The Prime Minister’s start-up initiative is a big call to Indian entrepreneurs and we expect taxes and regulations to help that initiative. We are looking to have an integrated and uniform platform for tax laws and regulatory policies. Also looking forward to ease of compliance and tax exemption that will entirely boost the e-commerce sector."

Taxation has been bug bear for many e-commerce players. They make no bones about tax exemptions and eliminating multiple taxation points.

"We are a fast growing e-commerce company and government should make this industry very flexible to operate in. They should bring in number of laws like No Capital Gains Tax for first time entrepreneurs and ESOP holders, lower interest rates for business loans and easy long term repayments of turnaround companies. Special package for companies’ revival under handloom and ethnic wear market. For the benefits of the employees the Budget should have tax exemption limit for women employees earning upto Rs. 5 lakhs and reduce housing loan deduction limit to Rs. 3 lakhs on Interest paid,” Shailesh Jain, Co-founder , Mirraw.com said.

Anupam Tulsyan, Co-founder & MD, Peachmode.com, said, " As an e-commerce company we are expecting easy taxation across states. For example we cannot ship COD shipments to Kerala because of Kerala govt rules. Now on unstitched material in Bihar, they are putting sales tax above Rs 2000 for e-commerce companies which sells across states. Delhi has introduced DVAT for e-commerce companies. It creates lot of problems. Either GST comes soon or taxation improves."