Flipkart and Amazon, the e-commerce giants are on a hiring spree for experts on government affairs and public policy. The reason behind the ramp up is the new foreign investment rules on e-commerce in India which saw an amendment, putting several restrictions on foreign-funded online platforms.
Walmart-owned Flipkart has hired Dhiraj Kapur, former VP of corporate affairs at Carlsberg India. He has been assigned as the head of government affairs and will be a key to the company’s understanding of the government’s policies.
Whereas, Flipkart’s rival Amazon is also planning to hire experts for three managerial posts on public policy and government affairs.
“To continue creating value for these different stakeholders, including communities, we work with industry associations, farmers and FPOs, other partners, governments and public authorities at the central and state levels,” said Rajnees Kumar, the chief of corporate affairs at Flipkart.
Besides, Flipkart is likely to hire retired IAS and IPS officers as experts to advise it on the government’s policies and affairs.
Flipkart is based out of Bengaluru, founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal together in 2007. The company initially focused on book sales, before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, and lifestyle products.
Amazon, on the other hand is an American multinational technology company, based out of Seattle that focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming and artificial intelligence. It was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos.
The new FDI policies came into effect starting February. The new guidelines direct e-commerce marketplaces to not sell products where they own a stake.
Now, e-commerce marketplaces can only have B2B relation with their sellers, they cannot exercise any control over their inventory. The new guidelines also ask ecommerce platform to not have exclusive selling rights on their platforms.
After the implementation of the new rules, Walmart and Amazon together lost $50 billion in market capitalisation. Amazon India also removed product listings from its preferred sellers such as Appario Retail and Cloudtail to comply with the ruling.
It was also reported that the Indian e-commerce sector might suffer a loss of $45.2 billion in sales by 2022 after the new FDI rules had come into effect.