Bureau of Indian Standards to bring service norms for e-commerce companies, aggregators

Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is in the process of setting standards for services provided by e-commerce companies and aggregators like Flipkart, Ola, AirBnB among others.
BIS, which lays down norms with regards to quality and safety of goods sold in the country, has been in discussion with various stakeholders to lay out standards for several issues ranging from standardisation of invoices and websites.

It also plans to come out with certification for secure websites in order to curb the menace of fly by night operators in the digital commerce industry. "There are several fraudulent websites that fleece money from consumers under the garb of being an e-commerce firm, selling goods. The certification will help consumers in identifying the reliable ones," said an official who did not want to be identified.

"The idea is to safeguard consumer interest," the official added.

These standards will touch upon areas which are outside the scope of the e-commerce policy in order to avoid any overlap.

The bureau has set up various committees to decide these standards. All major companies including Snapdeal, Flipkart and JioMart are a part of these committees.

The initiative is a part of standardisation activity being done by the National Standards Body through the Services Sector Department for 12 service sectors including retail, e-commerce and payments.

There have been increasingly high number of consumer complaints related to packaging, invoicing and redressal mechanism of e-commerce firms, said Sachin Taparia, chairman of LocalCircles, an online community for consumers.

Around 91 percent consumers wanted standardisation of complaint redressal mechanisms, response times, invoicing formats and packaging used by ecommerce platforms, according to a survey conducted by LocalCircles last year.

Standardization will not only lead to higher consumer satisfaction but will also mean lower returns and refunds for platforms, Taparia added.