Competition Commission Of India Clears Flipkart, Amazon Of Charges Related To Unfair Business Practices

The Competition Commission of India has cleared both Amazon and its rival Flipkart of charges of unfair business practices, Business Standard has reported.

The All India Online Vendors Association (AIOVA), a special interest group of more than 3,500 sellers, had alleged that Flipkart was abusing its dominant market position to favour select sellers.

AIOVA alleged that Flipkart wasn't adhering to a section of India's anti-trust laws which say that companies shouldn't abuse a dominant market position via unfair or discriminatory pricing.

The commission in its ruling said that “Looking at the present market construct and structure of online marketplace platforms market in India, it does not appear that any one player in the market is commanding any dominant position at this stage of evolution of market".

The Commission added its "considered opinion" was that Amazon has also not broken the rules.

AIOVA had earlier accused Amazon of favouring merchants that it partly owns, such as Cloudtail and Appario.

A couple of days back Competition Commission of India (CCI) had rejected allegations of price fixing levelled against app-based taxi service providers Ola and Uber. It said that drivers acceding to "algorithmically determined prices" by the taxi services does not amount to collusion between them.

In its order, the CCI also dismissed complaints of Ola and Uber leading a price discrimination and imposing a resale price maintenance system on the drivers.