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Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi on Tuesday launched several initiatives to strengthen consumer protection, including artificial intelligence-enabled helpline and tools to detect deceptive marketing practices, while major e-commerce players pledged to enhance online shopping safety. Leading platforms, including Reliance Retail, Tata Sons and Zomato adopted a safety pledge as the government rolled out new consumer protection measures like the AI-enabled National Consumer Helpline, e-maap portal and Jago Grahak Jago mobile application. "Significant progress has been made in expediting resolutions of consumer disputes," Joshi said at the National Consumer Day event. The minister, who attended the event online, highlighted that out of 3,628 cases filed with the National Commission between January and November this year, 6,587 cases have been disposed of through the country's three-tier consumer court system at district, state and national levels. The government's e-Daak
As many as five more firms have submitted their applications to the government to set up e-commerce export hubs in the country and a decision on this is expected soon, a senior official said. Logistics aggregator Shiprocket and air cargo handling company Cargo Service Centre (CSC) have already been selected by the government on a pilot basis to set up these hubs in the country. "We have received five more applications, including from DHL and Lexship. Out of the five, we have shortlisted three. We are going to decide on these applications soon," the official said. Two of the hubs will come in and around Delhi airport and begin operations in February next year. It will have facilities for expedited customs and security clearance in-house. Provision for quality and certifying agencies will also happen within the hub. It will also have an easy re-import policy, he added. This policy will enable the return of e-commerce consignments and rejects without payment of import duty. The offi
Zepto co-founder Aadit Palicha on Wednesday said the quick commerce platform's cafe offering, Zepto Cafe, will be launched as a separate app next week. In a post on social networking platform LinkedIn, the young entrepreneur highlighted the rapid scaling of the cafe service which has motivated the separate offering. "We're launching a separate app for Zepto Cafe next week! The team is shipping an MVP (minimum viable product) and iterating quickly, so it may not be perfect on Day 1, but it's worth it to launch fast :D "Zepto Cafe is scaling rapidly; we're launching 100+ cafes a month and already clocking 30K+ orders/day," Palicha wrote on LinkedIn. Zepto Cafe was launched in April 2022 as a division of Zepto, which itself was founded in July 2021 by Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra. Last month, Zepto announced the expansion of its cafe service to major cities through more than 120 cafes at stores across Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, and soon in Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune. "The ..
B2B e-commerce platform Moglix on Wednesday said it has signed an initial pact with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) for manufacturing incubation programme. The initiative aims to equip growth phase startups with tools, resources, and opportunities to accelerate their progress and drive innovation in the manufacturing sector, Moglix said. The programme will support over 25 growth phase startups in industries such as chemicals, automotive infrastructure and green energy, Moglix said. These startups will participate in the 12-month manufacturing incubation programme offering access to Moglix's extensive mentor network, supply chain infrastructure, and financial support via its NBFC arm Credlix, it said. "This collaboration is a transformative step for India's manufacturing sector. By combining Moglix's technological expertise with DPIIT's strategic guidance, we aim to build a sustainable, innovation-driven manufacturing economy that empowers ...
Online vendors have generated 15.8 million jobs in India, including 3.5 million for women, with about 1.76 million retail enterprises participating in e-commerce activity, says a report released on Wednesday. The report 'Assessing the Net Impact of e-Commerce on Employment and Consumer Welfare in India' was launched by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. "Plugging in data from our survey, we estimate that online vendors generate 15.8 million jobs, including 3.5 million jobs for women," the report prepared by Pahle India Foundation (PIF), a Delhi-based policy research institute, said. E-commerce, according to the report, has been a key driver of employment generation In India. On an average, online vendors employ 54 per cent more people and almost twice the number of female employees, compared to offline vendors. The report noted that two of the most widely-recognised contributions of e-commerce penetration in the retail sector are --growth in employment and improvements
A regulatory framework to push the country's exports through e-commerce medium is expected to be ready by September, a top government official said on Tuesday. Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal said that at present India's exports through this medium are only about USD 5 billion as compared to China's USD 300 billion, annually. He said there is a huge potential to boost these exports. In this regard, a meeting was held in the ministry on Tuesday with concerned departments such as revenue and industry representatives from areas like logistics and marketplace platforms. "We are working on setting up e-commerce export hubs in the country. We discussed on its framework. It is in our 100-day agenda," Barthwal told reporters here. When asked about the timeline for the framework to be ready, he said by September. There is a potential to take it to USD 50-100 billion in the coming years. Through these hubs, small producers will be facilitated to sell to aggregators and then that aggregat
A study to assess required infrastructure and identify main industry clusters for achieving the USD 1 trillion merchandise exports target by 2030 may be submitted by August-September to the commerce ministry, an official said. The official said that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is doing that study for the ministry. In 2023-24, India's merchandise exports dipped by over 3 per cent to USD 437 billion. Imports during the last fiscal dipped by 5.7 per cent to USD 675.4 billion. By 2030, the ministry is aiming to more than double the country's outbound shipments of goods. Explaining the rationale behind the exercise, the official said that to take the exports to USD 1 trillion, there will be an import of about USD 1.5 trillion, so to handle USD 2.5 trillion worth of trade "we need" additional infrastructure and logistics capacity at roads, ports, airports and railways. "If exports will increase, imports will also increase. There is a correlation between higher exports and imports.