Amazon: East India Company 2.0
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LET'S TAKE A S TEP BAC K:
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What was East India
Company?

The East India company was a British,
joint-stock company founded in 1600.
It was formed to trade in Indian Ocean region,
initially the East Indies and later with China
The company seized control of large parts of
Indian Subcontinent colonised parts of South Asia
and Hong Kong maintained trading posts and
colonies in the Persian Gulf residencies.
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The company rose to account for half of the world's trade during
the mid-1700s and early 1800s, particularly in essential commodities
including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, saltpeter, tea,
and opium
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According to the book by Parag Tope,"Operation Red Lotus",it says that
"The East India Company attacked Indians Independence in three ways
i.e, their political independence, their economic independence, and at last
their personal independence."
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Why 2.0?
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"Whatever East India Company did in the 18th century to capture India
the same is visible in the activities of Amazon.", the article titled
"EAST INDIA COMPANY 2.0" reads.
Claiming that Amazon wants to establish its monopoly in the Indian market
it says, "For doing so, it has started taking initiatives for seizing the
economic, political, and personal freedom of Indian citizens."
Hitting on Amazon's video platform, Prime video, the article says it has been
releasing movies and television series that are against the Indian culture.
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It also alleges that Amazon has established many proxy entities and "there are
reports that it has distributed crores in bribes for policies and fovour".
There have been reports that the US e-commerce giant is investigating
alleged bribes paid by its legal representative in India and spent a staggering
8,546 crore INR in legal expenses for maintaining a presence in-country
during 2018-20.
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Tweets ..
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There are five major criticism of the online retail platform.
1.The massive discounts they offer in killing offline retail, including neighborhood
grocery stores.
2. They give preferential treatment to large sellers.
3.They indulge in cross-selling and are aggressively pushing private labels.
4.They exploit small sellers by charging high fees and yet expect them to give hefty
discounts to customers.
5.They often find a way around regulations to continue engaging in all four
practices.
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Five Major Criticism

Retail Market share:
Flipkart
32%
Amazon
31%
Others
16%
Paytm mall
6%
Pepperfry
2%
Myntra
5%
Amazon India has a
31.2%
market share.
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Amazon is also using the data collected from consumers on its site to identify
lucrative and successful products that they will then create a version of under
their brand names.
Guess which company will appear first on the browser's search result?
This power is used to create an unfair playing field, engaging in anti-competitive
behavior, and crush the very small business.
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While this pandemic has caused one in six small
business to close (so far), and the Indian economy
to shrink by 23%. Amazon's astronomical earnings
during this time only prove that their market
share is enormous and growing.
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The Big things of concern

CAIT (Confederation of All India Traders) said that such control allows them to
do predatory pricing, deep discounting, preferential treatment of sellers with
capital dumping through their affiliate seller at its root.
All this is done to gain the market share and make illegitimate financial gains
at the expenses of livelihood of 8.5 crores small merchants, their dependent
families and employees.
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So, eventually, Amazon will own the platform, all the products for sale on the
platform, and the network for the distribution of products (not to mention all of
the data they are gathering on every person that shops and browses on their
website.
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And if they become one of the few places to purchase consumer goods, they will
then have the ability to set the price of those goods.

This type of concentrated market power is a very
distributing trend in the Indian economy leads
to a decline in competition, fewer new jobs,
and further income inequality.
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Final thought

Thank you
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