The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) plans to file a complaint with the fair trade regulator against Samara-Amazon’s acquisition of the Aditya Birla Group’s food and grocery retail chain More.
International companies such as Amazon would slowly make inroads in offline retail through such deals and would eventually kill small and medium retailers, CAIT secretary general Praveen Khandelwal told ET.
“The contours of the deal are still not clear. Once we have full details, we will approach the Competition Commission of India,” Khandelwal said.
CAIT has already opposed Walmart’s recent acquisition of online retailing platform Flipkart.
“Walmart has already set foot in India. Now Amazon is also getting into brick-and-mortar retail. Tomorrow, Alibaba would also come,” said Khandelwal.
The local traders’ body has opposed foreign direct investment in retail for long, saying it could kill small businesses in India.
Amazon and Samara Alternative Investment Fund are buying up Birla’s supermarket chain in a Rs 4,200 crore deal. Until Thursday evening, the acquisition of More wasn’t notified to the competition regulator.
“This is a reportable transaction as it crosses the Rs 350 crore assets and Rs 1,000 crore annual turnover benchmark. Once the filing is made, the summary of the deal will be made available online,” a CCINSE 0.00 % official said. After the notification, the CCI has to give its prima facie view on the transaction within 30 days and a final decision within 180 days.
Source: Economic Times