Government will examine complaints on Flipkart sale: Sitharaman

A day after e-retailer Flipkart apologised to millions of customers after its promises of bumper discounts on orders placed for a host of products came a cropper, the government Wednesday said it will look into complaints and take a call on whether more clarity is required on e-commerce in retail.

"We have received many inputs. lot of concern has been expressed. We will look into it," Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters here on Flipkart's 'Big Billion Day' sale held Monday

"Now there are many complaints. Whether there is a need for a separate policy or some kind of clarification is needed, we will make it clear soon," she added.

Flipkart's sale, that offered steep discounts on a range of products, has raised concerns among traders that such campaigns would badly affect players in the traditional retail market.

Earlier this week, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) had demanded that the commerce ministry take steps to monitor and regulate online businesses, as well as probe trade practices of e-commerce companies as to how these are offering huge discounts during the ongoing festival season.

"We failed to live up to this promise yesterday (Monday) and would like to apologise to every single customer for our failure," the Bangalore-based e-commerce major said in a mail to all its registered users after its portal crashed for hours during the day-long sales and rejections owing to stocks running out in minutes.

Claiming that a record 1.5 million people shopped on its portal, Flipkart accepted it was not adequately prepared for the sheer scale of the event.

"We didn't source enough products and deals in advance to cater to your requirements. More over, the load on our server led to intermittent outages, further impacting your shopping experience on our site," company co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal said.