The Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has announced that the company has made it compulsory for all sellers on its platform to use only Flipkart-branded packaging for delivering goods to consumers. The company says that this move would be environment-friendly and cooperative with regulations in states such as Maharashtra where single-use plastic have been banned.
The retail major has stated that the sellers that do not follow the rules will have to face consequences. The company will penalize non-compliant sellers by blocking their accounts or not delivering their orders. The policy has been launched a few weeks before the festive sales are set to begin.
“This is a restrictive policy and is being forced through account suspension,” a spokesperson for the All India Online Vendors Association said. “Flipkart should allow sellers to use non-Flipkart branded packaging from the open market which complies with regulatory requirements.”
Various online retailers have already mentioned on social media, complaining that Flipkart has blocked their accounts on this count. Through a mail, the company told all the sellers on its platform to buy packaging materials from Flipkart.com by September 23. If they fail to do so, their accounts will be blocked temporarily.
Nishant Gupta, senior director at Flipkart, said, “We are a responsible company and want to be environment-friendly. We have no profit making in this as the sellers will deal with our packaging vendors.”
This step would make sure that the sellers use packaging according to the norms around the use of plastic in packaging in states such as Maharashtra. Also, they would speed up deliveries by ensuring no time is spent on checking the quality of packaging material. This is a great step towards saving the environment and reducing the use of plastic.