Bharat Market: CAIT to launch national e-commerce marketplace for retail traders

Bharat Market: The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has announced that it will be launching ‘Bharat Market', a new national e-commerce marketplace, for all the retail traders. The traders body will be launching the portal in collaboration with several technology partners. 

The national marketplace will integrate the capabilities of various technology companies to provide end-to-end services to retailers. It will support retail logistics and supply chains from manufacturers to end consumers, including facilitating doorstep deliveries.

The ‘Bharat market’ e-commerce portal will include participation from retailers across the nation. It aims to bring at least 95 percent of the retail traders onboard, who would exclusively run the portal.

Significance

The ‘Bharat Market’ is expected to play an effective role in getting the essential commodities to reach the consumers at their doorsteps in the wake of the COVID-19 induced lockdown period. The initiative will receive active support and guidance of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

The All India Traders body is focussing on enrolling about one crore retailers on this e-marketplace in 2020 and make it the world's largest and most-unique e-marketplace ever.

Background

The centre has been taking vigorous steps to boost the e-commerce marketplace, especially during the lockdown period. This is not the government’s first attempt to take the Indian market to the digital platform.

Earlier in April 2016, the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the ‘e-NAM’ portal, an e-trading platform for the National Agriculture Market. The portal was launched to intergrate mandis across the nation and enable farmers to sell and buy the agricultural products online using this portal. Around 200 new mandis were integrated with the portal recently.