What: Reliance is preparing to separate its e-commerce activities from its marketplace.

Why it is important: China has already enforced such a measure, and now India is moving forward. Is this a new legal measure that should be expected in the rest of the world too?

The Indian retail giant Reliance is moving accordingly to the new regulations the Indian government is setting up, as it seeks to prohibit marketplace operators to have their related parties or associated enterprises as sellers on their platforms. As a consequence, Reliance’s platform, JioMart, is encouraging third-party sellers to join a specific part of its structure which is expected to separate at some stage.

Even though the branding remains to be defined, the new platform will be parallel to JioMart which will keep on being the retail arm of Reliance Retail and will offer categories of products that JioMart does not include.

Reliance to build separate online marketplace for third-party sellers