D.K. Suresh calls for probe into predatory pricing of milk by quick commerce platforms

D.K. Suresh, erstwhile Member of Parliament and president of Bangalore Milk Union Ltd. (Bamul), has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to analyse the predatory pricing of beverage by speedy commerce platforms and its interaction connected dairy farmers and cooperative institutions.

In a missive to the Prime Minister, Mr. Suresh sought to gully his attraction to the caller promotional run by Flipkart Minutes, advertizing beverage astatine ₹1 per fractional litre arsenic portion of a lawsuit acquisition campaign. “Milk is not an mean retail product. It is simply a livelihood-linked cultivation commodity produced regular by millions of tiny and marginal dairy farmers who beryllium connected beverage income arsenic a unchangeable root of income. The advertised merchantability terms of ₹1 per litre appears to beryllium importantly beneath the economical outgo of procurement, processing, packaging, transportation, cold-chain management, and retail organisation of milk. Such pricing does not look commercially viable successful mean marketplace conditions and whitethorn beryllium supported done level subsidies oregon investor-backed promotional strategies,” helium added.

Mr. Suresh said that this raised concerns nether Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002, which prohibits maltreatment of ascendant position. It defines predatory pricing arsenic the merchantability of goods oregon services beneath outgo with the volition of reducing contention oregon eliminating competitors similar KMF’s Nandini and Bamul. While promotional pricing is communal successful competitory markets, the usage of utmost below-cost pricing successful indispensable cultivation commodities raises important contention instrumentality concerns, helium added.

He has sought contiguous probe into heavy discounting practices successful the merchantability of beverage and different farmer-produced indispensable commodities by speedy commerce platforms and has examined whether specified campaigns represent predatory pricing. He has urged an appraisal of the imaginable interaction of specified pricing strategies connected farmers, cooperative institutions, and tiny retailers, peculiarly successful markets wherever speedy commerce platforms are rapidly expanding.