Traders’ body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), with the help of the Centre, is working on an e-commerce platform to enable local ‘kirana’ stores to take orders online and ensure last mile contactless delivery.
“This vast, purely Indian, e-commerce portal will make all efforts to on-board about seven crore traders of the country. Manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers of all verticals of domestic trade and consumers will be an integral part of this e-commerce platform,” said Praveen Khandelwal from CAIT, in a statement on Friday.
Apart from the Department for Promotion of Investments and Internal Trade (DPIIT), other promoters of the platform are Startup India, Invest India, All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation and Avana Capital, the statement said.
With the current Covid-19 crisis and the nation-wide lockdown, the population in Tier 2 and 3 cities of India that are highly dependent on these ‘kirana’ stores for their daily supplies, are now facing challenges. “To overcome this situation, the national e-commerce market place has been perceived, but it will not be restricted to the present crisis. It will be a permanent e-commerce platform for digitalising the existing business of the entire trading community of India,” Khandelwal said.
CAIT has been working on establishing an e-commerce portal for traders for the last few years and has been in touch with the Centre for appropriate technology and reach. It launched a pilot project called ‘e-lala’ way back in November 2015.
Khandelwal said the e-commerce marketplace being envisaged will comply with all laws, rules and regulations of the government.