The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) will launch a “full-scale” nationwide campaign against e-commerce and quick commerce platforms from May 1, 2025, the trade body announced in a press release. Additionally, it put forth its demand for an independent regulatory body for e-commerce and quick commerce platforms during an event in New Delhi. The conference members called these platforms “draculas” that harm local retailers.

During the “brainstorming event”, Praveen Khandelwal, National Secretary General of CAIT and a BJP MP, claimed that about 150,000 offline mobile retailers have shut shop due to e-commerce platforms, and several grocery stores are on the verge of shutting down because of quick commerce platforms. 

CAIT organised the ‘National Conclave on Cruel Face of Quick Commerce & E-Commerce’ in association with the All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA), All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation (AICPDF), and Organised Retailers Association (ORA). Together, these trade bodies came out with a list of violations that these platforms committed.

The trade bodies have demanded a policy resolution that includes:

“This conclave opined that action is needed now, else there is a risk of losing the foundation of Indian retail to the unchecked aggression of digital monopolies,” CAIT’s press release added.

CAIT will organise the next conference on April 25 and 26, 2025, in Bhubaneshwar, where the conference members will release a strategic roadmap for the campaign.

Khandelwal said that e-commerce and quick commerce companies are using their algorithm to influence the choices of the consumers. In addition, they are also using AI and ML to control consumer choices. While voicing his concerns regarding the data privacy issue, Khandelwal cited an example from a year ago, when he was looking for a restaurant to dine at. He pointed out that within minutes, a string of messages and notifications flooded his phone, which read: “Looking for a restaurant in Andheri?” He opined that this meant these companies had compromised and leaked people’s data.

Responding to a question from MediaNama, Khandelwal said: “The responsible people in the Government of India have taken due cognizance of these [data concerns] kinds of things. The Data Protection Act is yet to come. All these things will be taken care of under the DPDP Act (Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023).”

The trade bodies also highlighted the unfair practices and various violations committed by e-commerce/quick commerce companies. On this Khandelwal said: “And then they say they are working towards nation-building. This is not nation-building, this is nation-destruction and distortion.”

Dhairyashil Patil, President AICPDF, said that platforms like Zepto, Blinkit, and Instamart have received over ₹54,000 crore in foreign direct investment (FDI), yet only 2.5% has been employed by them to build infrastructure. These platforms have diverted a major share of the investment towards loss funding, subsidised services for a preferred few sellers, and “building a closed ecosystem” that keeps independent traders away and deceives consumers. “They are not marketplaces, they are inventory-led companies operating in disguise,” Patil added.

Advertisements

Notably, CAIT has already flagged this in their “White paper on Q-Commerce”, released in November 2024.

Patil further said that these platforms have created an illusion for consumers. Deep discounts and sleek UX drive overconsumption, no shelf life visibility, look-alike brands that mislead buyers, differential pricing based on urgency, device, and time, were some of the examples of unfair practices that Patil cited. “They didn’t remove middlemen, they renamed them,” he said, while flagging that these platforms have put 120,000 general stores and 400,000 distributors at risk. 

“Additionally, Blinkit and [Swiggy] Instamart violate the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 by failing to provide information critical for the consumer to make informed choices. Zepto goes a step further and omits [the] provision of any information whatsoever regarding the seller of the goods on its platform,” CAIT’s press release noted. This has pushed “nearly a quarter” of Indian grocery stores to the “brink of closure.” 

Kailash Lakhyani, Vice Chairman of CAIT and Founder Chairman of AIMRA, said that Amazon and Flipkart are “repeat offenders.” He added: “Using a maze of group entities and preferred sellers, these companies bypass FDI restrictions to dominate every layer of the supply chain while sidelining Indian retailers.” Furthermore, he called e-commerce and quick commerce platforms “blood-sucking draculas.”

Elsewhere, CAIT’s press release noted: “By creating a closed nexus of preferred sellers and service providers, Amazon and Flipkart have been undertaking the expressly prohibited inventory e-commerce, indulging in anti-competitive practices such as predatory pricing, deep discounting, controlling all levels of the supply chain and manipulating consumer choice by directly controlling inventory and indirectly controlling the price of goods and services on their platforms.”

Also read: