Govt tightens ecommerce rules: Kishore Biyani says grocery e-tailers to have operational difficulties

Grocery players in ecommerce space will have difficulties going forward, said Kishore Biyani, chief executive officer of Future Group after the government on Wednesday tightened rules for ecommerce companies. The new  foreign direct investment (FDI) norms will be effective from February 1,2019.

“I personally believe grocery business wherein some people were coming into the business, they won’t be able to do grocery business in India because without inventory grocery cannot be done,” he added.

Biyani said that FDI norms have only defined ecommerce market place clearly.

“I believe Snapdeal and Paytm have a model which was a pure market place and Amazon and Flipkart probably will have to convert themselves into a market place,” said Biyani.

Talking about deal discussions with Amazon, Biyani said, “Being in the market and being one of the leading players, we constantly are in discussion with every other player in terms of what we can do together. Therefore, within the contours of any policy the discussion continues.”

“I do not know about a particular transaction or thing which I can comment upon but I believe the policy was already existing B2B, so there is nothing which has changed for us,” added Biyani.