CAIT protests against Amazon chief Jeff Bezos's India visit

Over five lakh traders, across 300 cities, came together under the umbrella of Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Wednesday to protest against the visit of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

Earlier, Bezos announced an investment of one billion dollars to bring more than one crore Indian businesses online and enable exports of India-made goods worth 10 billion dollars by 2025.

CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said the business model of e-commerce giant Amazon and its subsidiary Flipkart involves predatory pricing and deep discounting which has created distortionary effects.

Earlier this week, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) launched an anti-trust probe to look into these allegations.

"The economy of this country has been run by traders since Independence, and we will keep running it in future too. If any foreign company wants to do business in India, it has to follow the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy and laws of the land in letter and spirit," said Khandelwal.

He said Amazon is selling goods at predatory prices, controlling inventory, engaging into preferential seller system and having exclusivity for many branded products.

These are unethical and monopolistic business practices, said Khandelwal adding that CAIT will organise protests in 300 cities against Bezos's on-going India visit.