OTP Please: Vandana Vasudevan exposes hard truths of the ecommerce economy

From online marketplaces using data to harm local businesses to the suffering that lies behind the glossy growth story that startups tell, Vandana Vasudevan exposes the hard truth of platform economy

OTP Please! Online Buyers, Sellers and Gig Workers in South Asia

By Vandana Vasudevan

Published by Penguin Random House India

384 pages  ₹499

 

It has been almost a year since Piyush Goyal, Union minister of commerce and industry, expressed his concerns about how the ecommerce boom might impact 100 million small retailers across India. While launching a report titled “Assessing the Net Impact of E-Commerce on Employment and Consumer Welfare in India” — published by the Pahle India Foundation —i n August 2024, Mr Goyal said that ecommerce is here to stay “but we have to think very carefully and cautiously about its role”.  Referring to the decline of mom-and-pop stores in the United States and Europe, he asked, “Is predatory pricing good for the country?” 

Vandana Vasudevan, who studied at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and has a PhD in urban development from the University of Grenoble, explores this question in her book OTP Please! Online Buyers, Sellers and Gig Workers in South Asia. It is based partly on her research with Janpahal, a Delhi-based NGO representing informal workers, which conducted a survey involving over 5,000 workers from more than 30 Indian cities. She also interviewed a number of people who buy and sell online to get a well-rounded picture. 

The book does a good job of presenting how ecommerce giants harm local businesses. One of the examples provided is of a small business owner from Kerala who sells spices, honey, pickles and other organic food products on Amazon. He says, “Selling on Amazon is a kind of trap. Because they decide how much sales they want to give you, not the customers.” He used to sell 100 kg of green cardamom every month when the price was ₹2,000 per kg. Hoping to make a good profit, he stocked up 300 kg. Suddenly, his sales took a hit. 

The author helps us understand this as an outcome of the “asymmetry of power that the platform has because of its hold over the main currency of the business: data”. When we buy online, we opt for the best price and do not think about how “ownership of all transaction data gives the company real-time information on consumers’ shopping behaviour, who likes what, which product is hot or not and all other key details of the shopper’s journey.” 

This book will be an eye-opener for many who are not aware of how ecommerce platforms use such data to create cheaper alternatives for bestselling products and manipulate online search results to push their own brands. We get these products at a lower price because the platform, unlike small businesses, does not have to pay any commission. 

The seller from Kerala alleges, “Amazon also sells green cardamoms under the brand name Vedaka…When they see my brand doing very well, they then suppress it and show their brand to customers looking for green cardamom.” As evident from this book, manipulation of pricing extends to other services, such as food delivery. The author notes that schemes such as Swiggy One and Zomato Gold expect restaurants to offer attractive discounts that are not sustainable in the long run. The platform gets high transaction volumes and commissions from buyers and sellers. Restaurants also pay for advertising to be discovered on platforms. 

The author exposes the suffering that lies behind the glossy growth story that start-ups tell. While working on this book, she was added to a WhatsApp group of workers organising themselves in creative ways despite the efforts of companies to prevent them from unionising. Through them, she learnt that private cars were operating as Uber cabs without a commercial licence, thus eating into the incomes of gig workers who were paying taxes for running commercial vehicles. This, allegedly, was happening with the platform’s consent. 

What makes the book unique is that it has chapter titles such as: Pleasure, Guilt, Gratitude, Anger, Freedom, Oppression, Anxiety, Isolation, Courage. It is organised by emotion rather than industry. The author restores the dignity that capitalism takes away from gig workers, who are often treated like easily replaceable automatons. 

The author challenges the idea that the need for instant gratification is the sole reason driving the popularity of ecommerce, food delivery, and ride-hailing. She shows how women, whose mobility is restricted thanks to patriarchy, and people with disabilities, benefit hugely from it. She brings in engaging stories from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal to give us a glimpse of how our neighbours use app-based services. She also examines the psychological and environmental impact of tech-enabled convenience. However, the voices of people who have founded these tech companies are missing. One hopes that other researchers digging into this subject will get founders to address concerns raised in the book.

 

The reviewer is a journalist, educator and literary critic.  Instagram/X: @chintanwriting