INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Amazon.com Inc's grocery service is slowly returning on its India website after the online retail giant faced disruption from revised
e-commerce curbs which kicked in on Feb
1.New federal rules, which bar companies from selling products via vendors in which they have an equity interest, forced Amazon India to
remove hundreds of thousands of products from its site last week.The policy has spooked Amazon and Walmart-owned Indian rival, Flipkart, as
it is forcing them to alter their business structures.On Tuesday, Amazon Pantry was offering select food products, such as cookies and tea,
Though Reuters reporters in both cities were able to place Pantry orders, several customers complained on Twitter they were struggling to
get their requests fulfilled.Government allowed Amazon to retail food products in the country in 2017 and the company committed $500 million
Amazon was using that government permission to sell some Pantry grocery products via an affiliate, two sources familiar with the plans told
Reuters.Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Though several of Amazon's products, such as its own range of
Presto-branded home cleaning goods, were still unavailable, some have returned for sale in recent days.Some products were now being sold
through sellers in which Amazon doesn't have direct or indirect equity stakes, making them compliant with the new rules, one of the sources
said.Nevertheless, the new policy has hit Amazon and Walmart hard.Morgan Stanley warned that the new regulations would increase the cost of
doing business and add uncertainty over losses for Flipkart
Walmart last year pumped in $16 billion to buy 77 per cent of Flipkart in its biggest ever deal.Though still too early to assess, Morgan
Stanley said it may make sense for Walmart to "walk away" if it can't see a long-term path for profits in the country.Investors too have
criticized the policy, saying the sudden changes to the e-commerce curbs raise broad worries about an unstable regulatory environment in
India."Frequent policy changes make the whole ecosystem nervous," said Rajat Tandon, President of the Indian Private Equity Venture Capital
Association, which counts global investors such as KKR Co and Sequoia Capital among its members.The new rules, however, have pleased small
traders who had long complained that e-commerce giants used their control over inventory from affiliated vendors to create an unfair
marketplace where they could offer discounts.(This story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is auto-generated from a
