Snapdeal, ShopClues and consumer brands to form lobby group - The E-commerce Council of India

On the lines of Indiatech.org, around 10 e-commerce firms including Snapdeal and ShoClues are planning to form a lobby group to represent the interest of home-grown e-commerce companies.

Called as 'The E-commerce Council of India', the lobby group will be primarily comprised of companies with significant local holding and true marketplace DNA.

The yet to be announced lobby group will be joined by more e-commerce companies in the coming days, reports Mint.

Apart from e-commerce firms, around 10 consumer brands are also slated to join the group indicates Entrackr's sources. Officially, the group is likely to be announced early next week.

Interestingly, the group comprises of same companies that raised the voice in favour of local sellers and SMEs. They pushed the government for not backing out from the deadline of FDI policy that impacted business arrangements/structures of Flipkart and Amazon in a big way.

On the lines of representing bodies like CAIT, AIOVA, and Indiatech.org, the E-commerce Council of India will become a third front in the e-commerce space for safeguarding true marketplace models.

Meanwhile, Indiatech.org- a lobby group formed primarily by founders of Flipkart and Ola to safeguard the interest of home-grown startups against foreign players appears to have weakened.

It happened largely because Flipkart walked out from the non-profit group and lack of interest from initial backers - Sachin Bansal, Bhavish Aggarwal, and Deep Kalra. Further, the departure of its CEO in a few months also weakened the lobby group.

Still, somehow, Indiatech.org is functional and recently backed founders on differential voting right and dual-class share structure, and the listing of startups on GeM.

While the upcoming lobby group of e-commerce firms and consumer brands may become an effective voice to advocate against violation of government policies, the group has to learn the factors behind ineffectiveness and digression of Indiatech.org and Bengaluru Vision Group.

For the uninitiated, BVG was formed under the chairmanship of former Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah, Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy, Wipro chairman Azim Premji, Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, and Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal.

The group was eventually was scrapped down by the state government following the notice from the High Court.