The tussle between e-commerce players and local trade and retail associations like Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), All India Mobile Retailers Association and All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation has been heating up for the last few months.

The e-tailers have been accused of deep discounting and predatory pricing, in addition to giving preferential treatment to preferred sellers.

This instigated a probe into their operations by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to investigate alleged misuse of their dominant positions.

However, two biggest online firms in India, expressed their disagreement.

While Walmart-owned Flipkart has filed a petition with the Karnataka High Court against investigation by CCI, Amazon too had moved the High Court few weeks earlier.

Here it’s important to note that Flipkart has opposed the investigation on the grounds of insufficient evidence and lack of credibility of the complainants.

On 14 February, the Karnataka High Court temporarily upheld the arguments made by Amazon and Flipkart, and granted an interim stay on the investigation.

The court also asked all parties to file their views inside 8 weeks.

Reportedly, the fight against local regulatory bodies has unified both companies that together contribute to the largest share of India’s online market, valued at US $ 30.8 billion in 2019.

Nonetheless, the fight to garner more market never ends. Flipkart is diversifying into the wholesale business in the upcoming quarter to go up against rivals like Amazon’s B2B division, Reliance’s Market and Tencent-backed Udaan, in addition to other vertical e-commerce start-ups.