CAIT’s e-commerce marketplace to be operational next month; to deliver orders in 2 hours

Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Traders’ body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), which has been time and again revolting against Amazon and Flipkart for alleged malpractices in businesses, will finally be launching its own e-commerce portal BharatEMarket in October. “In line of aligning physical trade with e-commerce, the CAIT is all set to launch its e-commerce portal Bharatemarket in October,” CAIT said announcing the upcoming launch. The marketplace will be launched in partnership with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the trader’s body had said in May. The portal has been promoted by PM Modi’s Startup India and Invest India along with All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation and small business lender Avana Capital. Beginning with groceries, the marketplace will compete with incumbent players viz, JioMart, Amazon, Flipkart, BigBasket, and Grofers.

“Through this “of the traders, by the traders, for the consumers” portal, the local shops will be able to access customer orders on the marketplace and deliver them in two hours,” CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal had told reporters earlier. The trader’s body had onboarded business networking platform for SMEs – GlobalLinker to offer core technology support and All India Transporters Welfare Association to provide the logistics support to traders.

CAIT also urged Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Sunday to set-up a Regulatory Authority along with upcoming e-commerce policy for regulating and monitoring e-commerce business and “having adequate powers to penalise offenders of e-commerce policy.” CAIT National President B C Bhartia and Khandelwal jointly in a statement said that having a large scope of e-commerce in India in absence of any policy will greatly distort the domestic retail trade comprising of more than 7 crores of small businesses and therefore a well guided and framed e-commerce policy is much needed. “However, CAIT has also been working actively on the launch of its e-commerce portal “Bharatemarket” very soon which will be a portal by the traders, of the traders and for the traders and consumers of India having a much different modal benefitting the existing physical retail system in the Country including the consumers.”

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The body will list its 7 crore traders and nearly 40,000 trade associations it represents on the marketplace under the ‘Phygital model’. “Marketplace will bring your neighbourhood stores closer to you – just a click away. Simply order on BharatEMarket and get served by those you have trusted for years and even generations,” according to the upcoming portal. CAIT in May had announced that the marketplace will not charge commissions and fees from sellers even as orders will be delivered without a fee. The traders’ body ran pilot programme in Prayagraj, Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Lucknow, Kanpur and Bengaluru initially and was expanded to more than 90 cities.