Retailers worried about Google’s online shopping fest

During diwali retailers had raised concerns about Flipkart ‘Big Billion Day Sale’ that saw product prices diving down to its lowest levels. Now retailers are wary of Google’s three-day online shopping festival (GOSF) that takes off on December 10. Brick-and-mortar retailers are anxious, because while Flipkart managed to report 100-million dollars (over Rs 600 crores) gross-merchandise-value (GMV) sale within 10 hours of its one-day festival, response to the three-day long Google event with more sellers and categories could be further damaging.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), a body comprising medium and small retailers, has registered a protest with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying the sale on Google, with larger data resources than Flipkart or Amazon, could be a disaster for brick-and-mortar retailers. Even leading Indian retailers including Reliance Industries, ITC and Aditya Birla have complained to the ministries of finance and commerce about hefty discounts offered by e-commerce companies in India.

Following the ‘Big Billion Sale’, traders body CAIT had asked the Commerce and Industry Ministry to take steps to monitor and regulate online businesses. In a letter to Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, National General Secretary of Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) Praveen Khandelwal demanded setting up of a regulatory authority for e-commerce business in India.

With online shopping is picking up pace in India, the third installment of GOSF is expected to garner bigger hype and interest than the last two years. This year, the organisers also plan to introduce digital walls in various cities where consumers can order through their smartphones by scanning the QR codes of the products. Google started GOSF in 2012. Last year it got almost 16 million hits on all partner sites despite technical glitches on the first day, and almost 40 per cent of the traffic was seen coming from Tier II and Tier III cities.