INTRODUCTION

The technology has advanced a lot that nowadays everything is available just on a
click. All the services and products are nowadays available on the internet. E
commerce business has been taking a great hype and so people have nearly
stopped buying products from the shops and they prefer buying it online as the
quality of the products remain same and they get the products delivered at their
location. The online market has affected and damaged the offline market. The
offline market needs high prices in maintaining and storing the products and so
they face major challenges. As these things affected the healthy competition and
so the government came up with the Competition Act, 2002. The world wide web
was then introduced in the year 1990 and soon after e commerce was been
introduced. The act was introduced to protect the interests of the consumers, and
also to maintain a healthy competition in the market. Predatory pricing has been
included in Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002. It is a kind of an abuse of
dominant position where the price of selling of the goods and services are too less
so that the other competitive are been eliminated and also cannot stay in the
market for a longer time. The punishment for the predatory pricing has been
defined under section 27 of the Competition Act, 2002.1

CASE AGAINST FLIPKART AND AMAZON

All India Online Vendors Association brought up a case against 2 online vendors
flipkart and amazon for not following the anti-trust laws and also they were
abusing the dominant position. The main issue that the association had was when
Wallmart took over flipkart. The association also had an issue with the pricing of
the vendors. They alleged that the vendors were keeping unfair and discriminated
pricing. The commission during its ruling said that in online market, there is no
vendor who is holding a dominant position.2 Later CCI ruled out that flipkart and
amazon were not violating section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002 and were also
abusing the dominant position. During the ruling, the CCI said that as the
association alleged that flipkart owned 40% of the market share was not been
proved in front of the commission and also they ruled that there are chances that
flipkart may have a good amount of resources. The association then alleged that

1
S.S Rana & Co. Advocates, Fllipkart’s Big Billion Days – An Anti Competitive Scheme?,
http://www.mondaq.com/india/x/738992/Cartels+Monopolies/Flipkarts+Big+Billion+Days+An+A
ntiComptetitive+Scheme (retrieved at 12/11/2018)
2
Alasdiar Pal, Flipkart and Amazon not abusing market position in India: CCI,
https://in.reuters.com/article/flipkart-amazon-antitrust/flipkart-and-amazon-not-abusing-
market-position-in-india-cci-idINKCN1NC1VR (retrieved at 12/11/2018)
small vendors stopped selling their products by themselves but they sell their
products on flipkart and amazon for which they have become the allies of the
same. Later the associated prayed for an interim injunction according to Section
33 of the Competition Act, 2002. The interim injunction was to stop Flipkart for
having Big Billion Days and other events for selling the products till and until the
final order is been passed. 3

3
FE Bureau, Flipkart, Amazon get Competition Commission’s clean chit,
https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/abuse-of-dominance-case-flipkart-amazon-get-
competition-commissions-clean-chit/1376660/ (retrieved at 12/11/2018)