Among the many travails being faced by our honourable finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman nowadays is the furore caused by her recent announcement of the zero merchant discount rate (MDR) policy for payments through RuPay debit cards and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) instruments. This policy dictates that when a consumer pays a merchant using RuPay or UPI, the bank may not charge the merchant a commission on the sale value that it usually charges a merchant, say, on a credit card transaction. Critics of this policy lament that it would begin to reverse the progress India has made in recent years to expand the digital payments network.

Publication: Mint

Date: January 16, 2020

The year 2019 witnessed significant developments in India’s competition law regime. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) completed a decade since the enforcement provisions of the Competition Act, 2002 (Act) were implemented in 2009. The year 2020 began with the CCI publishing its report on the ‘Market Study on E-commerce in India’, which captures the key market trends and features of e-commerce, core competition issues, observations and findings. This report has far-reaching implications for e-commerce entities in India as it lays down the approach that would be adopted by the CCI in assessing the conduct in this sphere.

Publication: Business Today

Date: January 17, 2020

Harsha Razdan of KPMG India says retailers which put the customer at the centre, have private labels will eventually emerge winners. Excerpts from an interview with ET NOW. You have a wave of disruptions happening in the retail space globally, but in India it is a completely different kettle of fish. Going by the market-cap, going by what a DMart or Trent or Reliance Retail is projecting, India must be the only market where food and grocery and retail businesses are valued as if there is no problem in the world, there is no Amazon in the world, and there is no disruption in the world.

Publication: The Economic Times

Date: January 17, 2020

We saw the e-commerce industry gradually flourish over the years. During FY19, the industry performed well and recorded higher growth on the back of an increase in internet users, and the easy availability of smartphones coupled with attractive data packages. The tightening of digital regulation rules and secured internet servers has ended customer worries regarding online payments fraud and brand authenticity, thus gaining consumer trust over time. As we are in a new decade, e-commerce comprises only 5 percent of India’s retail market which shows that the industry still has a long way to go.

Publication: MoneyControl

Date: January 18, 2020

At least 79 per cent of consumers in the country are willing to shift their online purchases from retailers that mostly operate through websites or apps to the one that has in-store automation facilities, according to a survey conducted by global consulting firm Capgemini. The survey titled, ‘Smart stores: Re-booting the retail store through in store automation’ found that India was the second after China, surpassing a global average of 46 per cent that showed similar interest patterns among the overall surveyed consumers.

Publication: The New Indian Express

Date: January 19, 2020

When shopping malls started sprouting up in India, the general perception was it would wipe out the general trade merchants. Now, with the rise of e-commerce, that discourse has engulfed the entire offline shopping fraternity, with retailers, big and small, trying to make themselves relevant as consumers move online. They are now trying the omnichannel approach where their online and offline stores are integrated seamlessly to be present at all customer touch points.

Publication: Business Today

Date: January 18, 2020

While business-to-business startups in India boomed in five years through 2018, the consumer was back in focus in the year gone by. Business-to-consumer startups, or B2C, took home the major chunk of investor money and also saw more deals than B2B startups. B2C startups received $6.23 billion in funding over 425 deals in 2019—a 23 percent jump, according to Inc42 DataLabs’ Annual Startup Funding. B2B startups, which have seen funding grow 21 percent annually since 2015, noted a 2 percent decline in funding deals. Still, the biggest hit were the startups with a hybrid model that services both businesses and consumers.

Publication: Bloomberg Quint

Date: January 19, 2020

India has one of the world’s largest working-age population, but finding the right talent is a massive struggle. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents in a Twitter survey by Vijay Anand, CEO and founder of The Startup Centre in Chennai and known as “The Startup Guy” on the microblogging site, said they believe India has a shortage of talent to build world-class startups. Much of Anand’s follower list comprises of Indian startup ecosystem players from founders to venture capitalists.

Publication: Scroll

Date: January 19, 2020