Indian consumers will find it hard to buy goods from the US directly via Amazon’s Global Store in India because of the recent FDI norms for online retailers that were implemented from last month.
Launched with much fanfare in late 2016, Amazon’s Global Store has become virtually non-existent here with a sharp fall in the items listed on the platform.
Amazon Exports Sales LLC is the main entity for the Global Store, selling directly in India. From a peak of 6 million products before February, there were just about 6,000 products under this entity on Amazon India last month, according to Marketplace Pulse — a data platform on online marketplaces.
“The first urgency was to take care of the India business. Over the past few weeks, gradually, Global Store has become non-existent,” a person aware of the matter said. New FDI rules bar sellers with equity interest from the marketplace from selling on that particular platform itself. For the core domestic business, Amazon had to dilute its stake in seller firms like Cloudtail and Appario last month.
An Amazon spokeswoman did not respond to a query emailed by TOI.
India was the third market after China and Mexico to have such a facility where Indians could buy products from the US directly via the local marketplace. In previous years, Indians bought directly from the US during popular sale events like Black Friday. At the time of the launch, Amazon had created a separate page for global products on its Indian marketplace. This does not exist any more when TOI checked till the weekend.
Consumers can still buy from the US site of Amazon, but that has multiple restrictions over payment methods and overall shopping experience. Global Store had allowed Indians to pay in local currency. The new draft e-commerce policy would throw additional challenges too since it requires that every seller entity must be registered in India.
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