Indian Merchants Protest Against Amazon's Alleged Preferential Treatment: Bloomberg

Amazon.Com Inc’s AMZN alleged unfair practices has attracted a protest event from over half a million small Indian business merchants on Thursday, Bloomberg reports.
The local traders have long blamed giant e-tailers like Amazon and Walmart Inc WMT-owned Flipkart for affecting the livelihoods of small online and offline sellers via preferential treatment.
The trader groups’ protest event named “Asmbhav,” meaning “impossible” in Hindi, coincided with Amazon’s virtual annual seller jamboree called Smbhav, or “possible” that debuted last year.
India’s small traders, distributors, and merchants sought respite from the foreign influential retail companies by lodging court and antitrust regulator petitions ahead of a potential amendment of foreign investment rules.
The protest organizers will hand out “Asmbhav awards” to CEO Jeff Bezos, country chief Amit Agarwal and its India business partner, and Infosys founder, Narayana Murthy, symbolizing their dig at Amazon’s Smbhav awards to select sellers. The event is backed by trade groups like the All India Online Vendors Association and the All-India Mobile Retailers Association.
Amazon’s four-day event panel speakers include ex-PepsiCo Inc PEP CEO Indra Nooyi, telecom operator Bharti Airtel Ltd’s Chair Sunil Mittal, India’s chief economic adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian and Infosys Ltd INFY co-founder and Chair Nandan Nilekani. The participants will include small businesses, startups, developers, and retailers.
Price action: AMZN shares traded lower by 1.15% at $3,360.99 on the last check Wednesday.

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