E-commerce companies' united fight against piracy is stronger than ever

Even as the enormity that is the counterfeit goods space goes largely untracked, e-commerce firms appear to be tightening their belts

About a month ago, Nikhil Infant was telling his brother about the Bose Bluetooth-enabled speaker he had ordered after spotting “an awesome deal” on an e-commerce website. Today, the speaker sits in his room gathering dust. “I trusted the seller because he had made allowance for a cash-on-delivery option,” he says. “I got ripped off. The product is a fake.”

Author and politician Shashi Tharoor, too, encountered a fake when, in his words, a “smart, well-dressed man” approached him at Mumbai airport late last year. The man wanted an autograph on Tharoor’s book, An Era of Darkness. What he didn’t realise