The launch of the updated version of the Conference of All India Traders’ (CAIT) e-commerce portal Bharat eMarket has been shifted to April 2. The platform and its app, which have undergone beta testing for a year, were earlier scheduled to be launched around Holi this month.

While the plan to launch the platform soon is on track, the traders’ body cited a delay in developing the final backend technology stack as the cause for rescheduling.

The e-commerce platform has so far onboarded over 50,000 vendors and will be selling products across all categories that rivals Amazon and Flipkart sell. National Secretary General, CAIT, Praveen Khandelwal, said use of the platform and its services will be available free of cost to vendors.

CAIT is yet to finalise several aspects of the business model and will be holding a meeting post Holi to zero down on the revenue model as it also plans to have a robust team in place to manage the platform, which will include separate technology and research departments.  

Khandelwal told BusinessLine, “The foundation of the platform will be based on transparency. Sellers registered on the portal will have to make their credentials visible to customers. The transaction and sale of goods will happen entirely between seller and purchaser, we are just connecting them.”

He added, “We have made it clear that we are not going to charge any transactional charges or commission. This is an additional e-shop sellers will run outside their offline shop or store. The platform will be enabled with logistics, the charges and payment mode for that service, too, will be decided between the seller and customer, we will only provide embedded logistics service.”

CAIT is currently in talks with several third-party logistics players for their services.

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