Amazon Pantry back in business in India

Amazon.com’s grocery service is slowly returning on its India website after the online retail company faced disruption from revised e-commerce curbs which kicked in on February 1.

New federal rules, which bar companies from selling products via vendors in which they have an equity interest, forced Amazon India to remove hundreds of thousands of products from its site last week.

The policy has spooked Amazon and Walmart-owned Indian rival, Flipkart, as it is forcing them to alter their business structures.

On Tuesday, Amazon Pantry was offering select food products, such as cookies and tea, in New Delhi and Mumbai.

India allowed Amazon to retail food products in the country in 2017 and the company committed $500m in investment.

Amazon was using that government permission to sell some Pantry grocery products via an affiliate, said two sources familiar with the plans.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

Though several of Amazon’s products, such as its own range of Presto-branded home cleaning goods, were still unavailable, some have returned for sale in recent days.

Some products were now being sold through sellers in which Amazon did not have direct or indirect equity stakes, making them compliant with the new rules, one of the sources said.