India antitrust physique seeks Supreme Court docket listening to to expedite Amazon, Flipkart circumstances

By Aditya Kalra

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s antitrust physique has requested the Supreme Court docket to listen to authorized challenges to an investigation of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Walmart (NYSE:WMT)’s Flipkart e-commerce platforms, saying these challenges, filed by Samsung (KS:005930), Vivo and others at Indian excessive courts, have been aiming to scuttle the probe.

In a submitting on Dec. 3, reviewed by Reuters and never launched publicly, the Competitors Fee of India requested the court docket to listen to 23 challenges, filed by Samsung, Vivo, and several other distributors on the Amazon and Flipkart platforms, to allow the case to be determined shortly.

Amazon declined to remark, whereas Flipkart, Samsung, Vivo and the competitors fee didn’t reply to requests for remark.

The investigation is a significant regulatory problem for Amazon and Flipkart in a market the place e-commerce gross sales are set to exceed $160 billion by 2028, up from $57 billion to $60 billion in 2023.

The fee’s investigation unit concluded in August that Amazon and Flipkart breached India’s antitrust legal guidelines by favouring chosen sellers on their web sites. It additionally discovered that smartphone corporations similar to Samsung and Vivo broke these legal guidelines by colluding with the 2 e-commerce corporations to solely launch merchandise on-line.

Because the findings, nearly two dozen lawsuits throughout 5 Indian excessive courts have been filed by some Amazon and Flipkart distributors, in addition to by Samsung and Vivo, to dam the investigation as they wish to “debilitate and scuttle” the method, the fee mentioned.

The separate lawsuits, if allowed, “will result in absurdity since it can intervene with the flexibleness of the (fee’s) Director Common to hold out investigation in any matter.”

Amazon and Flipkart have confronted criticism from smaller retailers for years over their enterprise practices, saying they’ve suffered because of deep reductions and preferential therapy meted out by the platforms.

Amazon and Flipkart deny any wrongdoing.

A Reuters investigation in 2021, based mostly on Amazon inner paperwork, discovered the corporate gave preferential therapy for years to a small group of sellers and used them to bypass Indian legal guidelines.

The present fee investigation began again in 2020 however has confronted many delays.

A lot of the 23 lawsuits filed throughout India within the newest problem to the case accuse the fee of not following due course of throughout its investigation.

The fee’s submitting asking for the 23 circumstances to be transferred to the Supreme Court docket is more likely to be heard this week, a lawyer conversant in the proceedings mentioned.