Federation of Retailer Association of India supports Bharat bandh on Sep 28

The Federation of Retailer Association of India (FRAI) Thursday announced its support for the Bharat bandh announced by small retailers and traders associations on September 28 to protest against the Flipkart-Walmart deal.

The FRAI, which claims to be a representative body of around four crore micro, small and medium retailers, has appealed to the government to revoke approval to the Walmart–Flipkart deal.

According to an FRAI statement, the deal would hurt traders of India, which would be impacted by discounting, loss funding and market concentration strategies adopted by e-commerce firms.

"We believe that the Walmart–Flipkart deal will jeopardize the livelihoods of India's millions of retailers. Such collaborations of multinationals will increase the cost of doing business for the poor retailers and will severely impact our daily earnings," the federation said.

"We, therefore, appeal to the central government to scrap this deal," FRAI President Ram Asre Mishra said.