Piyush Goyal hears out e-commerce, food delivery and logistics CEOs

Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday interacted with a group of chief executives from e-commerce, food delivery, cash and carry and logistics companies over video conferencing to understand the issues they were facing, before passing on his recommendations to the home ministry.

Over the past five days, e-commerce companies have seen their business slow to a crawl as they grapple with local authorities indiscriminately shutting down operations, despite a notification by the central government including e-commerce as an essential service during the ongoing 21-day nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 infections.

The meeting was attended by Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Amazon India head Amit Agarwal, Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl, apart from representatives from Swiggy, Zomato, Delhivery, NetMeds, Udaan, Walmart, Metro Cash and Carry and DHL, among others.

“The purpose of the call was to speak to a few players, understand how they’re looking at the situation, make an assessment and pass it on to the Ministry of Home Affairs,” said a person aware of the matter.E-commerce firms raised concerns around the labour shortages, sought for an expedited channel for trucks to get into states, asked for a way in which the government could issue passes for their staff electronically and a uniform list of items that could be delivered by them rather than having several different lists at state levels.

One of the major concerns that they raised was differentiation of essential versus non-essential items by the government, which meant not delivering a lot of products that consumers wanted.

The industry leaders pointed out that a way should be found for sellers on marketplaces to function during the lockdown.

“The minister was of the view that we should trust the people and companies to deliver essentials, rather than having the authorities pointing out what can be delivered and what cannot,” a person who attended the meeting told ET. “He is of the belief that discretionary spending is just not there, so people are going to be buying only essentials.”

It is, however, unclear how many of the industry’s demands will be granted by the home ministry. Efforts by the DPIIT and Ministry of Commerce to bring out a list of items that e-commerce firms will be allowed to deliver has not found much traction yet.

“Ecommerce and logistics industry had a very positive meeting with Mr. Piyush Goyal, who patiently listened to the issues that industry is facing while moving essential supplies to customers,” Flipkart’s Krishnamurthy said in a statement.