Impact of Current Regulations on ECommerce in India: With Special Reference to Amazon

Kruttika Krushnanjana
Symbiosis Law School, Hyderabad, India

Volume III, Issue II, 2020

India currently is in its prime phase in terms of growth in the e- commerce sector and is a very crucial expansion market of the American e- commerce giant, Amazon. Hence, the author aims to examine the current regulations governing ecommerce in the country, specifically the newly introduced guidelines by the government in the Foreign Direct Investment policy, 2018 and how the new set of regulations have affected the online markets of massive businesses, such as Amazon and Flipkart. These two e- commerce giants are the two major variables taken into consideration as they encapsulate the issues and challenges faced by e- commerce businesses in conducting their business in compliance with current internet regulations.

This circular by the Indian government placed an effective ban on Amazon and its local competitor, Flipkart from conducting the sale of products from companies in which they have an equity stake, such as in case of Amazon which has massive equity stake in Cloudtail. Therefore, it is pertinent to underline as to how these changes might affect the core business models of these e-commerce entities, this being the overall research goal of this paper. This paper is based on a doctrinal research methodology and is analytical as well because this is an extensive study on present day examples of businesses that have been benefited or have been affected by the current regulations on e- commerce in India. The author also underlines the various challenges that may arise through electronic data interchange, disputes that cover B2C segment and Copyright and data protection issues and gives solutions for the same.  The lacunae of this paper is that it only deals with the relevant challenges faced by only two e commerce businesses i.e., Amazon and Flipkart in the Indian Scenario and its scope is limited to the new rules and regulations introduced by the FDA on e- commerce in India. References have been made to the old laws governing the framework in order to measure and compare the actual outputs, difficulties and challenges of the e- commerce sector.

Keywords: E- commerce, Law, Amazon, Flipkart, Foreign Direct Investment, Equity stake,

 

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