Flipkart has become the latest Indian e-commerce startup to run afoul of its own sellers.
A Bangalore-based businessman has filed an FIR against Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal for allegedly cheating him of Rs. 10 crore. Naveen Kumar, who owns Indiranagar-based electronics outlet C-Store, says Flipkart hasn’t paid him for laptops he’d supplied to them in 2015-16. In addition to Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Kumar has also named Flipkart’s Sales Director Hari and Accounts Managers Sumit Anand and Sharauque in his FIR.
Kumar says that he had entered into a contract with Flipkart to supply laptops and other electronic goods, and had supplied 14,000 laptops to the company between June 2015 and June 2016 for its Big Billion Day sale. But Kumar alleges that Flipkart didn’t adequately pay him for his laptops. “Flipkart returned 1,482 units but did not pay for the remaining units. TDS and shipping charges for those units too were not paid. When asked to clear the dues, Flipkart falsely claimed it had returned 3,901 units. By not clearing the dues, they have cheated me to the tune of Rs 9,96,21,419,” the FIR says.
The Indiranagar police told TOI that a case has been registered under IPC sections 34 (common intent), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating), and a probe was on. C-Store, for its part, brands itself as a Dell Exclusive Store, and is located at Indiranagar’s upscale 80 feet road. It provides laptop sales and repair services, and is rated 3.9 on JustDial.
This isn’t the first time sellers have locked horns with the promoters of large Indian e-commerce companies. Last year, several sellers had filed cases against Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal for allegedly defaulting on their payments. Sellers had also protested against Shipa Shetty and Raj Kundra, the founders of AskMeBazaar, when the company had shut down without paying their dues. Most famously, Stayzilla founder Yogendra Vasupal had been arrested earlier this year for allegedly defaulting on the payments to a vendor.