{"id":293254,"date":"2025-04-29T12:56:12","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T12:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/ed-said-to-be-quizzing-apple-xiaomi-in-amazon-flipkart-probe\/"},"modified":"2025-04-29T12:56:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T12:56:13","slug":"ed-said-to-be-quizzing-apple-xiaomi-in-amazon-flipkart-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/ed-said-to-be-quizzing-apple-xiaomi-in-amazon-flipkart-probe\/","title":{"rendered":"ED Said to be Quizzing Apple, Xiaomi in Amazon, Flipkart Probe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ED<\/div>


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India’s financial crime agency has privately sought sales data and other documents from smartphone players including\u00a0Apple\u00a0and\u00a0Xiaomi\u00a0as part of an investigation into\u00a0Amazon\u00a0and Walmart-owned\u00a0Flipkart,\u00a0sources\u00a0familiar with the matter told Reuters.<\/p>\n

The agency’s\u00a0queries\u00a0come in the backdrop of\u00a0India\u00a0and the United States nearing a trade deal. The protectionist e-commerce<\/a>\u00a0regulations in\u00a0India\u00a0have been part of those discussions, according to one\u00a0Indian official, as US authorities have long called for opening up the sector.<\/p>\n

India’s Enforcement Directorate agency, which\u00a0probes economic crimes, has been investigating\u00a0Amazon<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Flipkart<\/a>\u00a0for years for allegedly breaching laws by stocking and exerting control over goods they list online.\u00a0Indian laws prohibit foreign e-commerce\u00a0companies from doing so as the platforms can only operate a marketplace to connect buyers and sellers.<\/p>\n

India’s small traders\u00a0say\u00a0such clandestine practices, along with steep online discounts, have disrupted businesses at mobile phone stores, but\u00a0Amazon\u00a0and\u00a0Flipkart\u00a0have maintained they comply with all\u00a0Indian laws.<\/p>\n

The directorate wrote in recent weeks to smartphone companies, including\u00a0Apple<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Xiaomi<\/a>, to get data related to their online sales, according to three industry\u00a0sources\u00a0and one senior\u00a0Indian government official, who all declined to be named as the investigation process is confidential.<\/p>\n

One of the industry\u00a0sources\u00a0said the Enforcement Directorate was looking at dealings between smartphone companies and\u00a0Amazon\u00a0and\u00a0Flipkart, and had also sought any financial contracts signed by the phone makers for online sales.<\/p>\n

Apple\u00a0received the agency’s directive in March, said one of the\u00a0sources.<\/p>\n

Apple,\u00a0Amazon\u00a0and\u00a0Flipkart\u00a0did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Enforcement Directorate also did not respond, while\u00a0Xiaomi\u00a0declined to comment.<\/p>\n

India’s e-retail market is set to exceed $160 billion (roughly Rs.\u00a013,62,590 crore) by 2028, up from $57-$60 billion (roughly Rs.\u00a04,85,459 crore – Rs.\u00a05,11,010 crore) in 2023, consultancy firm Bain estimates.<\/p>\n

The government official said the smartphone companies had been approached by the directorate only to seek information and it was unlikely they will be accused in the case, although “the investigation is going.”<\/p>\n

“Eventually if there’s wrongdoing, there will be monetary penalties (on e-commerce\u00a0companies),” said the official.<\/p>\n

Last year, a separate\u00a0Indian antitrust investigation concluded\u00a0Amazon\u00a0and\u00a0Flipkart\u00a0breached antitrust laws by giving preference to select sellers on their platforms, and also colluded with Samsung,\u00a0Xiaomi\u00a0and other smartphone companies to exclusively launch products online.<\/p>\n

The companies have not commented on the report and the antitrust case is still ongoing.<\/p>\n

Counterpoint Research data shows that Samsung and\u00a0Xiaomi\u00a0together held an almost 33 percent share of the\u00a0Indian market in 2024, with\u00a0Apple\u00a0at seven percent. Around 40 percent of phone sales in\u00a0India\u00a0are online.<\/p>\n

A Reuters investigation in 2021, based on internal\u00a0Amazon\u00a0papers, showed the company exerted significant control over the inventory of some of the biggest sellers. The company denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2025<\/em><\/p>\n

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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India’s financial crime agency has privately sought sales data and other documents from smartphone players including\u00a0Apple\u00a0and\u00a0Xiaomi\u00a0as part of an investigation into\u00a0Amazon\u00a0and Walmart-owned\u00a0Flipkart,\u00a0sources\u00a0familiar with the matter told Reuters. The agency’s\u00a0queries\u00a0come in the backdrop of\u00a0India\u00a0and the United States nearing a trade deal. The protectionist e-commerce\u00a0regulations in\u00a0India\u00a0have been part of those discussions, according to one\u00a0Indian official, as US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.gadgets360cdn.com\/large\/apple_reuters_1645509155494.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[3865,828,6581,228076,3578,322,228077,3580,6484],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293256,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293254\/revisions\/293256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}