Government Should Stay Miles Away From E-Commerce: DIPP Secretary

The government should stay miles away from e-commerce and allow it to flourish, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) secretary Amitabh Kant told NDTV on the sidelines on the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos. "I am totally against any regulation in e-commerce," he said. This is the first time a government official is on record to say that there are no plans to regulate e-commerce.

Mr Kant said it's important to allow the freedom, flexibility and energy of Indian entrepreneurs to blossom in e-commerce. "Government should keep itself miles away e-commerce. Because that's going to the big area of growth for young Indian entrepreneurs. They're going to use smartphones. They're going to use technology. They're going to use innovation to drive business. And I think government must keep itself at arm's length," he said.

Talking about excessive competition in the sector that led to some complaints in the past, he said, "People will compete and people will go bust and if you can't compete you'll go bust. If you compete you'll get a larger share of the market. But the consumer must distinguish between the good and the bad players. In my mind e-commerce is going to be the big story for India because of sheer enterprise, sheer innovative spirit and the fact that we have a very young population," he said.

Talking about the government's decision to allow 100% foreign direct investment in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce, he said, "B2B is the big thing. B2C model is basically about inventory. It's about stocking up and then selling and the only fear on that is that it can lead to large scale imports but I think we need to tackle that issue of B2C separately," he said.

He added: "Actually a company like Flipkart or Snapdeal uses B2b model. It actually allows all the small and medium enterprises to sell their products. They just created a marketplace. And that's the way India must go. Just allow them to flourish."