U.S. Senator Warren urges Amazon separation, India stores want probe following Reuters story

NEW DELHI, Oct 14 (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren identified as for breaking up Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) and Indian merchants demanded a govt probe of the company soon after a Reuters investigation showed the e-commerce huge had copied items and rigged search final results in India.

The Reuters report, reviewing hundreds of inside Amazon documents, uncovered that the U.S. organization ran a systematic marketing campaign of building knockoffs and manipulating look for success to raise its have personal brands in India, one of the company’s major advancement markets.

Wednesday’s report confirmed that, at the very least in India, manipulating research success to favour Amazon’s products, as very well as copying other sellers’ items, were being section of a formal system at Amazon – and that at the very least two senior executives had reviewed it.

The Reuters investigation drew bipartisan criticism of Amazon from U.S. lawmakers.

Linking to the story on Twitter and Facebook, Warren, a long-time critic of Amazon, reported “these documents present what we feared about Amazon’s monopoly electricity — that the organization is ready and equipped to rig its platform to benefit its base line although stiffing tiny enterprises and business owners.”

“This is a person of the a lot of factors we will need to crack it up,” she stated.

Warren, a well known Democrat, advocated the break up of Amazon and other tech giants in 2019 when she was functioning for president. Considering the fact that then, as a senator from Massachusetts, she has continued to utilize pressure on corporations like Amazon.

Ken Buck, a Republican on the Household of Reps antitrust subcommittee, also shared the tale on social media, declaring, “These documents verify Amazon engages in anticompetitive practices this kind of as rigging research outcomes and self-preferencing their very own goods in excess of competition.”

“More concerning, it contradicts what Jeff Bezos instructed Congress,” the Colorado lawmaker explained. “Amazon and Bezos need to be held accountable.”

Amazon did not answer to a ask for for remark on reactions to the report.

In response to questions for Wednesday’s report, Amazon said, “We believe these promises are factually incorrect and unsubstantiated”. The company did not elaborate. It additional that Amazon displays “lookup success based on relevance to the customer’s research query, irrespective of whether or not this kind of merchandise have personal makes supplied by sellers or not.”

INDIA Stores, Get started-UPS Anxious

In sworn testimony prior to the subcommittee last calendar year, Amazon founder Bezos reported the enterprise prohibits its staff from using data on unique sellers to aid its personal-label enterprise. In 2019 a different Amazon executive testified that the enterprise does not use these facts to make its own non-public-label products and solutions or change its lookup final results to favour them.

The Amazon documents reviewed by Reuters showed how the company’s non-public-manufacturers staff in India secretly exploited interior info from its India unit to duplicate products and solutions offered by other companies, then provided them on its system.

The company promoted revenue of its private brand names like AmazonBasics by rigging search final results on its platform in India so that its products would seem, as 1 2016 tactic report set it, “in the first 2 or 3 … research benefits.”

A team symbolizing hundreds of thousands of India’s brick-and-mortar vendors said on Thursday the country’s government must launch an investigation into Amazon.

“Amazon is producing a terrific downside to the little makers. They are having the cake that is not intended for them,” Praveen Khandelwal of the Confederation of All India Traders advised Reuters. The group suggests it signifies 80 million retail merchants in the nation.

Indian shops say foreign e-commerce companies like Amazon and Walmart Inc’s (WMT.N) Flipkart indulge in unfair business techniques that damage smaller corporations, allegations the businesses deny.

The Alliance of Digital India Basis, a nonprofit representing some of India’s most significant startups, reported the techniques comprehensive in the Reuters report were being “hugely deplorable”, contacting into dilemma “the reliability of Amazon as a superior faith operator in the Indian startup ecosystem”.

In a site write-up, the group urged the Indian federal government to choose motion in opposition to “Amazon’s predatory playbook of copying, rigging and killing Indian brands”.

A top rated formal in the economic wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of Indian Key Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling get together, urged customers to shun the organization on Thursday.

“I call upon individuals of this region to #boycottAmazon,” Ashwani Mahajan, co-convenor of Swadeshi Jagran Manch, said on Twitter.

Reporting by Aditya Kalra in New Delhi and Steve Stecklow in London Enhancing by William Mallard

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