<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/57626692.cms" />It seems merchants and vendors are not happy with <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=snapdeal&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Snapdeal</a> and apart from falling numbers, the online marketplace is grappling with another challenge. 
 
An <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=online+vendors&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">online vendors</a> association conducted a survey on pending payments and stocks on <keyword id="541988" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="SnapDeal">Snapdeal</keyword> and it was revealed nearly Rs 1.2 crore were in outstanding dues. 
 The <keyword id="3339351" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="All-India-Online-Vendors-Association">All India Online Vendors Association</keyword> (AIOVA) conducted a survey and sought details from its 2,100 members, asking details such as payments pending, stock pending in Snapdeal-Plus which allows sellers to stock their products at the nearest Snapdeal fulfilment centre and the ticket number for the complaint registered with Snapdeal. 
 
As per various reports, Snapdeal held payments due to various reasons. ET reported payments were held up due to reasons like fake products sold by them, penalty for returned orders which did not reach the sellers and inaccurate charges for packaging and logistics. 
 
The due amounts ranged from Rs 2,878 to as high as Rs 56 lakh. The value of the stock pending at the Snapdeal fulfilment centres was not considered to arrive at the figure of Rs 1.21 crore. 
 
An AIOVA spokesperson told ET some sellers will be meeting the Snapdeal team in this regard. 
 
"The response was as per expectation with majority members coming out and telling us that they have stopped selling on Snapdeal. We also collected data of disputes ranging fromRs 1,000 to Rs 1.5 crore which are stuck since the past 6-8 months due to which sellers have stopped selling. We hope (that) either the Snapdeal management or government takes these cases and clears the pending dues,” an AIOVA spokesperson told ET. 
 
However, Snapdeal has rejected the allegations. "Seller dues are processed and settled as per predefined payments cycles, information of which is available with the sellers. There are no outstanding payments to sellers. In fact, earlier this week we have further reduced the payment cycle for SD+ sellers, which will enable them to receive their payments 40% faster,” Snapdeal told ET in a statement.

Vendors allege Snapdeal yet to settle dues worth Rs 1.2 crore. Here are the details

New Delhi, Mar 31 () E-commerce companies like Amazon and Grofers are gradually resuming services across various cities they operate in, but it will take at least a week or so to clear the pending orders, according to industry executives. E-commerce companies have been struggling to deliver orders after the government ordered 21-day lockdown, to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus, came into effect. Even though the government allowed delivery of essential goods including food, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment through e-commerce, players have complained of their delivery staff being hassled by police. With local authorities shutting down warehouses and stopping trucks from crossing state borders, e-commerce players have seen their operations getting disrupted. Paytm Mall said there were over 1 lakh orders placed by customers which were yet to be processed by sellers due to the restrictions announced by the government. The company has now waived off order delay and cancellation penalties (charged at 3-7 per cent) for merchants until April 22. "These are unprecedented circumstances and Paytm Mall's merchant support and communication teams are working hard to ensure all seller queries are resolved timely and updated information regarding order processing and fulfillment are shared with them regularly," Paytm Mall Senior Vice President Srinivas Mothey said. Grofers, in a tweet, said it has a backlog of 5 lakh orders and it will be a few more days for the company to get back to 100 per cent operational capacity. Another challenge facing the industry is the availability of limited staff for warehouses and logistics. "Due to the lockdown, our delivery partners had also gone home for a few days. We are now requesting them to come back with us...We are also trying to scale up our operations by working with delivery partners from other companies who have come forward to help us," Grofers said. The company said it is working with local authorities to get passes for its staff that will allow them to continue operations and make deliveries. Snapdeal said it continues to accept orders for non-essential items, but they are expected to be delivered only by the end of April as per current estimates. "Our delivery partners are facing acute shortage of delivery agents. A lot of goods were stuck in transit (trucks, rail etc) and these are now starting to reach warehouses. We expect the warehouses to reach full capacity and overflow soon since a large number of customer orders are undelivered at this point," the company added. For large players like Amazon India too, it has been a difficult time. The company has resumed deliveries in select cities, and is working on first serving existing orders and for essential products that have been purchased using prepaid methods. To help e-commerce companies process the spurt in orders, fintech companies like Razorpay are also working overtime to ensure systems are in place. Harshil Mathur, CEO and co-founder of Razorpay said online businesses in the essentials category are struggling to keep up with demand and ensure business continuity. "We want to do our bit by helping them adapt and be flexible to meet these changing needs. We have now launched same-day settlements for all Razorpay customers who provide essential businesses till April 15, which means businesses will receive funds in just a few hours instead of the usual 3-5 working days settlement period," he said. This will help businesses improve their cash flows and manage operational expenses better, Mathur added. SR RVK

COVID-19: E-commerce cos resuming ops, clearing order backlog could take at least a week

<ul><li>Facebook and Twitter have come under the scanner for how they regulate content on their platforms in India for two separate incidents in the past three months.</li><li>The threat to democracy lies in the grey area where freedom of speech ends and crosses over to ‘hate speech’ territory.</li><li>Lawyers told Business Insider that India’s IT (Amendment) Act, 2018, which has been pending for nearly two years now, is far from perfect.</li></ul>In India, Twitter and Facebook are facing two sides of the same coin. While one is under fire for <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/twitter-removal-of-prashant-bhushan-tweets-opposed-by-internet-rights-body/articleshow/77667757.cms">removing content without being asked</a> to, the other is being asked why it <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/facebook-row-escalates-as-bjp-leader-asks-for-shashi-tharoors-removal-from-parliamentary-panel/articleshow/77656021.cms">didn’t remove content</a> that was ‘hate speech’. The power which social networks have over democracies worldwide has come under global scrutiny, whether that’s in India, the US, Australia, or Brazil. The 2016 US election was only one example of how a social network, if manipulated, can influence the behaviour of people across an entire nation. <div type="image" title="mark zuckerberg congress" msid="78121719" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., United States on 10 April 2018 on how he is &amp;quot;responsible for&amp;quot; not preventing the social media platform from being used for harm, including fake news, foreign interference in elections and hate speech.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> At the center of it all is the content they peddle and what they choose to remove — the battle between freedom of speech and where it crosses the line to become ‘hate speech’. “Companies will be better off if they stop this narrative of how they have their own community standards. They can cite the law and explain why they removed a post,” Mishi Choudhary, an online civil liberties activist and the Legal Director of Software Freedom Law Center in New York, told Business Insider. <div type="image" title="jack dorsey rahul gandhi" msid="78121757" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Jack Dorsey meets then Congress President Rahul Gandhi in November 2018&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> According to her, companies like Twitter and Facebook have ad-hoc policies that they change on their own or under the pressure of local governments. There is no standardisation. The solution proposed by India, which has been on the docket for nearly two years now, is the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2018. It no longer allows Facebook, Twitter or any other social network to operate as an ‘intermediary’. The inner workings of the IT (Amendment) Act, 2018 The first part of the IT (Amendment) Act, 2018, makes it mandatory for social media apps to trace the origin of content on their platforms — upon receiving a court order. It is an important aspect that has been clarified, according to lawyer Harsh Walia, a partner at Khaitan &amp; Co. “This specific provision may bring much respite to the social media companies as the term “actual knowledge” was a subject of debate/judicial interpretation so far,” he told Business Insider. The second part of the IT (Amendment) Act, 2018, is where content regulation comes in. If social networks are no longer ‘intermediaries’, they will be accountable for what is circulated on their platforms. They will be required to deploy technology or appropriate mechanisms to ‘proactively’ identify and remove access to unlawful content. This is what Twitter already did with <keyword id="6368850" type="DEFINITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="prashant-bhushan">Prashant Bhushan</keyword>’s tweets — and why it could be a problem was highlighted in the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/twitter-removal-of-prashant-bhushan-tweets-opposed-by-internet-rights-body/articleshow/77667757.cms">letter by the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF)</a> sent to the social network protesting the move. “This biggest issue is that the term “unlawful” has a broad connotation and social media companies should not be expected to know the intricacies of all statutes to determine what may be lawful or unlawful,” explained lawyer Harsh Walia, a partner at Khaitan &amp; Co. What’s the alternative? One way to standardise the process by which content is regulated and reduce government influence is to have human rights law become the underlying framework. It would also take away the power from social networking platforms to decide what is and isn’t hate speech, according to Choudhary. “Human rights are agreed upon globally, and they also enable transparency. Social networks can cite the law and say why they removed a post. Mark Zuckerberg shouldn’t have to justify his actions — why should he have the power,” she said. The amendment also doesn’t spell out specific consequences — any kind of liability or punishment — for failing to adhere to the requirements. According to Walia, non-compliance with these obligations will lead to a situation where the safe harbor granted to these platforms will no longer be available to violators. “This could expose them to consequences stipulated in respect of the relevant content-related offenses,” he said. India takes center stage “The arguments and the level of scrutiny this time around is different because it’s the US election year. The Indian elections may not have mattered for social media platforms, but the 2016 election <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/a-republican-led-senate-panels-report-on-russian-election-meddling-threw-a-wrench-into-trumps-conspiracies-here-are-its-biggest-findings-/articleshow/77619881.cms">changed the conversation in a very big way</a>,” said Choudhary. The problems of how social networks are operating in India may have pulled it to the spotlight due to the upcoming US elections but India — as the world’s largest democracy — can poise itself as a leader, according to Choudhary. “India will have to rise above party lines. It will also have to consider that governments can’t actually pressurise companies to change their policies as and when they deem fit,” she said. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/defense/news/rajnath-singh-to-address-parliament-on-india-china-border-row-as-tensions-continue-to-simmer-in-ladakh/articleshow/78118498.cms">Rajnath Singh to address Parliament on India-China border row as tensions continue to simmer in Ladakh</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/snapdeal-says-it-has-just-tested-deliveries-using-robots-and-it-was-successful/articleshow/78120511.cms">Snapdeal says it has just tested deliveries using robots and it was successful</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/ronnie-screwvala-explains-why-covid-edtech-boom-is-unlike-demonetisation-boost-for-digital-payments/articleshow/78119790.cms">Ronnie Screwvala explains why COVID edtech boom is unlike demonetisation boost for digital payments</a>

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Vendors allege Snapdeal yet to settle dues worth Rs 1.2 crore. Here are the details

BI India Bureau

COVID-19: E-commerce cos resuming ops, clearing order backlog could take at least a week

PTI

For Facebook and Twitter, the changes to India's IT (Amendment) Act is just what the doctor ordered — or not

Prabhjote Gill