During the ongoing crisis of coronavirus pandemic, government has banned E-commerce companies for the supply of non-essential goods after April 20. The government issued new guidelines on Sunday stating the E-commerce platforms will only be delivering essential items like groceries, medicines, sanitizers etc and the supply of non-essential items will regain after the lockdown gets lifted up. Most e-commerce platforms which were preparing themselves for non-essential items delivery have paved their way back to essentials. The data from the industry estimates says that the e-commerce platform has been down for almost 90% as the gross merchandise value comes from smartphones, consumer electronics, apparels and large appliances. To compensate the losses the e-commerce platforms have been up with groceries and other essential items which are in high demand but a low value, low margin thing. A food and grocery worth $2.3-3.5 billion cannot compensate overall $38 billion e-commerce sector.
On the new guidelines issues by the government, Amazon India said that consumers whose list of essentials had expanded to ‘work from home’ and ‘study from home’ products, as well as small businesses, sellers and manufacturers will be very disappointed. The company also stated that they totally agree with the government’s decision to keep citizens healthy and it is need of the hour to ensure safety of citizens and serve them with essential items while they stay home. “This situation is rectified soon so that the urgent need of consumers is met and that there is revival of economic activity”, the spokesperson said on behalf of consumers and sellers. “We will continue to follow the guidance and deliver essential products and work closely with all central, state and local authorities for expedited processes to make safe deliveries of priority products possible,” the spokesperson added.
Paytm Mall owner has urged government to increase the extent of essential goods, “Laptops, mobile phones, and accessories, computer hardware, webcams, all these things should be allowed to be part of essential goods. If the lockdown continues, lack of proper technical support would hinder the efficiency of employees which in turn would affect a company’s operations,” he said. He further stated that many people are working from home amid lockdown and lack of essential items leads to inefficiency in operation. Snapdeal spokesperson said that the company will continue to function as per the orders of government and deliver only essential items. Meanwhile, Flipkart is yet to give a statement over the issue.
Consumers and companies across India were looking forward to the relaxation over non-essential goods after April 20 especially on electronics, apparel and home appliances but, the new guidelines issues by the government do not permit that for nearly a month more. According to the industry experts, the e-commerce companies have to do 130% business from last year to recover all the losses and the retail and discretionary will be down by 30%. The all the losses are because of the drag in the supply chain amid the coronavirus pandemic.
