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After a year of beta testing, the Conference of All India Traders (CAIT) is looking to launch an updated consumer facing version of its e-commerce portal Bharat eMarket in March 2022. This comes a month after the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) held a meeting with e-commerce industry stakeholders, where top e-commerce companies had presented their in-house programmes and plans to digitise local shops and businesses, apart from discussing the new e-commerce rules.
CAIT’s Bharat eMarket will sell products across all categories that rivals Amazon and Flipkart sell. An older version of the marketplace was launched as app and website in March last year, and it has been twhrough several pilots, CAIT’s National Secretary General, Praveen Khandelwal told BusinessLine. So far, the platform has added over 50,000 sellers.
Last year, right before the second wave hit, CAIT was aiming to onboard 7 lakh traders by December 2021.
Khandelwal said, “We are launching our very own Bharat eMarket platform in March, post Holi. The tagline will be mere liye, mere desh ke liye. It will be a democratic platform, compliant with e-commerce rules. Trial runs have been conducted and we have 50,000 traders on board. We have not opened the platform for customers.”
However, there was no further clarity given on the structure, commissions and business model of the platform. Khandelwal said every aspect of the e-commerce platform will be discussed in a board meeting scheduled on February 23 and 24.
He added, “It (the platform) will certainly have robust logistics technology, for which we are talking to logistics companies. It will support integrated logistics facilities ”
CAIT also held a separate meeting with various e-commerce industry stakeholders on February 3. The trader’s body is planning to consolidate 150 national associations and chambers of commerce across the states by February 15 to build a “task force” or create a front to draft unanimous recommendations and push for the implementation of the new e-commerce rules. CAIT is also planning to create educational campaigns for these members on the importance of e-commerce and why it is necessary to digitise.
The traders’ body has been in a protracted battle with popular e-commerce companies over deep discounting and alleged violation of FDI rules. Khandelwal said “if necessary, we will also start a national agitation.”
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