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Counterfiet goods and the fledgeling e-commerce market places

India has a nascent and a very active market place. With good interest, the right climate for growth and right product mix, the indian retail marketplace seems to be going places.

However, there are some alarming signals that seem to be ignored for growth that have a good chance of being dangerous to all the stakeholders involved.

The issue I am talking about is the sale of counterfeit goods in all the indian market places. India has not had a history of strong Intellectual property rights. This time it is getting messier.

The Indian marketplace model is very interesting and suits well to a country as diverse as India. The market place model floated by all the major e-railers suits the fact that the seller and the buyer can be connected for serving the needs for every day goods that are not necessarily covered by IP laws. India needs more effective IP laws since it is struggling with some products like traditional indian products that cannot be covered by IP versus modern products that need to be protected by IP laws.


If the e-railers do not make this distinction soon, there is soon going to be a case of the product companies choosing to move away from the market place model and eventually India as a market. This will also have a cascading effect on the entire market. Before we know, we would have lost a good construct in the retail landscape.
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