GOQii and Flipkart engage in legal war over deep discounting

Legal notices and replies are going back and forth between Flipkart and GOQii houses as they stand by their statements and complaints w.r.t. Flipkart’s deep discounting practices over its marketplace platform.

The ‘battle’ had started as GOQii lost it’s corporate contracts due to the heavily discounted products that were being sold on Flipkart. After several conversations with Flipkart requesting the dominant e-commerce marketplace to control the discounts provided on GOQii products that lead to no consequence, GOQii sent a legal notice to Flipkart.

It even reached out to the Department of Promotion of Industrial and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and Competition Commission of India (CCI) elaborating how Flipkart’s practices are violating the norms of Competition Act 1972 with their 70-80% discounts.

To this, Flipkart has sent a legal reply to GOQii and has also approached DPIIT and CCI clarifying that it hasn't violated any norms as Flipkart itself doesn’t decide the discounts and prices of the products on its platforms, except for its private labels, hence deeming the allegations baseless.

It says that the sellers or resellers decided for how much they want to sell any product on the platform, and hence deep discounting on GOQii’s products aren’t Flipkart’s responsibility.

Flipkart had told Entrackr the same when it had received the first legal notice from GOQii about a week ago.

However, GOQii stands by its legal notice, by sending a reply to the marketplace saying that this legal response is only an “afterthought”, as reported by TOI.

Vishal Gondal, CEO of GOQii claims to have WhatsApp and e-mail based evidence that proves how Flipkart controls the pricing, contrary to what Flipkart is claiming.

This legal war, if continues with GOQii presenting that evidence, might render a huge blow to Flipkart as its pricing policies will come into question, a factor that would lead to an investigation into Flipkart’s adherence to govt set norms.

Even though e-commerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon slashed their prices after the recent change in policies, this could lead to a reinvestigation on that front.