Traders body CAIT launches Initiative to Accelerate Digital Payments acceptance among Merchants

Traders body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Thursday launched an initiative -- Digi Vyapari-Safal Vyapari -- to accelerate acceptance of digital payments among merchants across the country.

CAIT has partnered with HDFC Bank, Mastercard, Common Service Centres (CSCs) of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) and Global Linkers for the initiative.

Realising that e-commerce will play an important role in business, "we will make live showroom of traders on e-commerce portal which will have integrated facilities of digital payments, logistics and live chat," CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said.

He added that the initiative is aimed at accelerating the acceptance of digital payments among merchants and linking them with e-commerce portals by creating their e-commerce showrooms.

Smita Bhagat, Head – Government & Institutional Business and e-Commerce, HDFC Bank said that the initiative will make a big difference in the lives of small traders and merchants by ensuring that they have easy access to business finance and banking resources.

There are about seven crore traders in the country. PTI RR

While Govt is Set to Probe E-Commerce Firms' Steep Discounts, Amazon is Hiring 50K+ Associates for Great Sale

Amazon India, which is all set to offer great sale in this festive season, has created more than 50,000 seasonal positions across its network of fulfillment centres across the country in order to be ahead of its rival Walmart-owned Flipkart and Softbank, Alibaba-backed PayTM Mall.

These 50,000 seasonal positions have been created across its network of fulfillment centres, sortation centers, delivery stations and customer service sites in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Pune and others ahead of the festive season.

A section of these recruits will also work with the 20 customer service sites across 16 cities, which provide voice support for customers in vernacular languages like Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. These customer service sites support Amazon customers in India with pre and post order service through email, chat, social media and phone.

Amazon India Vice President (India Customer Fulfilment) Akhil Saxena told PTI that these 50,000 seasonal recruits will help in festive enhancement which in turn will play an "instrumental" role in "driving an exceptional experience" during Amazon India's Great Indian Festival Sale that is slated to be held between October 10-15.

Govt panel set to probe e-commerce firms’ big discounts

Meanwhile, a 10-member panel has been set up by the corporate affairs ministry of government of India, to examine the trends in digital economy, including steep discounts at e-commerce stores. The panel will also carefully look through central and state government policies that do not foster principles of competition in letter and spirit.

According to Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), these deep discounts are predatory pricing that creates an uneven playing field and is detrimental to traditional retailers as well as manufacturers.

Therefore, a review of the competition law has also been started recently to find out if theese steep discounts offered by e-commerce firms promotes competition or stifles it as alleged by their old school rivals.

In 2015, two brick-and-mortar retailer bodies, Retailers Association of India (RAI) and the All India Footwear Manufacturers and Retailers Association (AIFMRA), had approached the Delhi High Court arguing that e-commerce companies had undue advantage as they were allowed to access foreign direct investment (FDI), through which they could provide deep discounts that traditional retailers would not be able to match and compete.

The panel formed will review the ongoing practices in the digital economy, backlog of competition cases to be resolved and the fee structure followed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

Source - Economic Times, LiveMint

Govt. Lauches 'E-Lala', An E-Commerce Portal To Help Small Traders

In June this year, we reported that Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), India's apex body of small traders, is developing an e-commerce platform called 'e-lala' on a nationwide basis to help small traders. Finally on Monday, Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated the e-commerce portal - e-lala.biz to promote and help small traders in India amid uprise of big e-commerce players in India.

Naidu complimented CAIT for e-lala initiative which is aimed at promoting the interests of 5.77 crore small businesses in the context of rapid expansion of e-commerce in the country.

The 'e-lala' portal is a direct interface between the consumers and the sellers. This means, there won't be any third party involved during the whole process, which will ultimately save the consumers money as they will not have to pay the commission component.

Launched in Nagpur by CAIT, e-Lala is the first e-commerce portal in the country "by the traders-for the traders". It is a location based portal wherein Traders from different cities are registered under their respective category of items. The Consumer has the option to either to buy online or from physical store of the chosen seller. Each seller at the portal has their own website and the liberty is given to the seller to operate the website either himself or prefers to operate by the portal.

Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said it is a step towards the government's "Digital India" plan. The portal has set a target of getting on board 50,000 traders in 100 cities by March 2016.

He said online shoppers in the country are expected to increase from 34 million in 2014 to 100 million in 2016 and e-commerce has grown manifold from Rs 3,600 crore in 2011 to Rs 53,000 crore in 2015.

The portal has products across different categories including Food & Grocery, Electronics & Appliance, Furniture, Clothing and general merchandise.

For traders in India, e-Lala has features like Admin Panel for each retailer, Stock management, Payments through Credit Card / Debit Cards / Cash on Delivery, and Email and Phone alerts when the orders are placed by the consumer.