After asking e-commerce platforms to self-regulate themselves - the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has yet again alerted these platforms to exercise more transparency in their functioning through various parameters.

The CCI recently came out with recommendations on their market study on e-commerce. Speaking at length about this Ashok Kumar Gupta, chairman of CCI said the purpose of market study is to understand the sector and find out the concerns raised by stakeholders. We have identified those concerns and have found there was information asymmetry and imbalance in bargaining power.

In the last chapter of the report that talks about observations, the commission has told these platforms to bridge this information asymmetry and to be transparent in their working- particularly on search ranking, use of consumer data, rating of the entities, he said, adding that in case they were sit with business entities, they should share the data. "By doing this probably a number of concerns could get addressed as to what their discount policy is, and what the various factors leading for doing that,” he said in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

Moreover, he said, “These concerns can always lead to analysis of enforcement on the basis of case by case analysis. Since this sector is a newly emerging sector and has benefited a lot in terms of price competition, price transparency, and we want this sector to grow but at the same time, we also need that this sector should be in harmony with the other counterparts. The business practices which they evolve also should be in sync with brick and mortar shops,” added Gupta.

“Once they do this, probably some concerns may get addressed but if those concerns remain and if other entities or business participants feel they are unamenable to competition law enforcement then cases can be filed or CCI can even take up suo moto cases and go ahead with enforcement,” he further added.