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This week Flipkart and Amazon will start their annual sales festival and with it will mark the beginning of India’s biggest e commerce festival season. However, this time India’s biggest online shopping festivities may be marked by the conspicuous absence of small sellers. This is because there is noticeably less excitement among small sellers for the upcoming festive season.
The development is least surprising given that for long time small sellers have been complaining about preferential treatment that Flipkart and Amazon dole to large sellers. Last month, Techpluto had reported that small sellers have approached India’s competition watchdog to stop Flipkart from giving preferential treatment to large sellers during their Big Billion Day (BBD) festival.
A reputed business daily spoke with dozens of small sellers to gauge their mood ahead of the festive season. Business daily reported that this time several small merchants have stocked up far less quantity of products compared to the previous year. Most of these merchants cited Flipkart and Amazon’s biased attitude for their lackluster response.
Flipkart and Amazon, both of whom boast 100,000 & 400,000 registered sellers on their platform respectively, chose not to comment over the report.
Meanwhile, some analysts have said that both companies are somewhat justified in giving preferential treatment to large sellers. They claim that e-commerce companies tend to push large sellers during festive seasons as it becomes easier for them to maintain quality control and also ensure speedy delivery of the products.
With competition intensifying in the e-commerce space, both Flipkart and Amazon surely can’t afford to get complacent on critical issues like ‘quality’ and ‘speedy delivery.’ Both e commerce giants are expecting to clock sales of worth $2.5 – 3 Bn during the festive season that stretches till end of the year.
