The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Thursday invited the top e-commerce companies including Amazon, Flipkart and Reliance to iron out differences in the proposed e-commerce policy.

The meeting is being called ‘Seedha Sanwad’, which will be held on January 27, according to the letter sent to the companies. While the meeting is currently planned through a video conference, CAIT has asked for an offline meet if the government changes restrictions norms in Delhi by then. BusinessLine has seen a copy of the letter.

This comes two days after a meeting between DPIIT, CAIT and domestic and foreign e-commerce players.

‘Business hygiene, transparency’

“Prompted by a mandate that all sorts of goods traded and all kinds of services provided in India through any digital mode including social commerce must have to be brought under the ambit of e-commerce so that the entire eco-system of e-commerce should have business hygiene and transparency in order to provide best quality goods and services to the consumers of India coupled with reasonable prices and efficient after sales services,” Praveen Khandelwal, National Secretary General, CAIT said in the letter.

“Since there exist differences among e-commerce stakeholders about the conduct of online business in the country, it is thought advisable to have a face-to-face discussion to bring broad unanimity on basic fundamentals of e-commerce business among the stakeholders in the larger interest of e-commerce trade. The deliberations of the conference shall be presented to Shri Piyush Goyal, Hon’ble Minister of Commerce, Government of India, and other concerned officials,” he added.

Digitising MSMEs

A senior executive of a top e-commerce company told BusinessLine that the core conversation of the meeting with DPIIT on Tuesday was to find ways to help digitise MSMEs and local businesses. The e-commerce companies were presenting and suggesting various programmes they have built in-house to enable the digitisation plan for MSMEs faster during the meeting. However, a few members in between changed the subject to bring up the e-commerce policy. The executive added that the key focus for DPIIT currently is to ensure smooth running of smaller and offline business amid third wave. The policy will be worked upon once the third wave of the pandemic slows down.

Related Topics