The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has written to ecommerce companies asking them to come up with plans to work with small retailers to help boost the neighbourhood stores, reported The Economic Times, citing three senior industry executives, who also said that this indicated a policy may be in the works regarding the same.

According to one of the executives cited in the report, the government, through this, is seeking to address the concerns of small retailers over online discounting.

The executive said that the Centre has taken note of the fact that the ecommerce business is constantly growing in the country and has, in fact, delivered decent growth this festive season despite the consumption space witnessing a slowdown overall, the report said.

“Hence, it wants to create a policy framework whereby small retailers and businesses can also be part of this growth story," the executive was quoted as saying in the report.

When contacted by the paper, Flipkart, Amazon, Zomato, Swiggy and Big Basket didn’t respond to queries.