E Commerce aggregators of hotels and restaurants under food regulator scanner

FSSAI directs E-Commerce entities to debar Non-licensed FBOs - Vendor Management 

On 20th July, the Indian food regulator issued a notification to all the leading food delivery application business to streamline the vendors merchandising food on their respective platforms. Following a series of complaints on its citizen connect platform, FSSAI has issued this directive to select service providers. The current list includes Box8, Faasos, FoodCloud, Foodmingo, Foodpanda, JusFood, LimeTray, Swiggy, UberEats and Zomato. The regulator has instructed the marketplaces to enforce food safety compliance frameworks in the business while on-boarding a vendor.

The market size of the online food delivery amounts to USD 7120 Millions in 2018 and is increasing at an estimated growth of 22% by 2022 as per a recent study. Although, barring few players most of the market is still unorganized. Said that, the market size also include the brand owners own merchandise sites. Regulating this industry before it becomes mammoth in size is very much important to FSSAI. Also, this would be an avenue for the regulator to attract the food business into its ambit as currently FSSAI doesn’t have complete data of food business in India owing to its unorganized market size.

What are the immediate steps for the listed in the notification should adapt?

At Smartcompliaz, we have helped various domestic and international brands to build their online merchandise along with developing a due diligence framework which include vendor management. We have also assisted E-commerce entities to galvanize their funding within the framework of DIPP  (FDI) rules and regulations. As an immediate strategy 

Compliance Strategy – Develop a compliance strategy for overall business aligning organizational context, mission & vision and also values 

Vendor Management – Develop, document and implement a vendor management framework comprising of all the applicable regulations like FSSAI, Trade, GST etc., 

Contract Management - Contract management forms a critical component in case of enforcement and hence a contract with all the compelling clauses are required to be maintained 

Traceability framework – This would be the differentiator for the e-commerce business and every business should track and record the mobility of the food 

Customer Care - “Never lose a customer” having a good follow-up on the issues would bring satisfaction to the customers and an amicable resolution would help reduce  customer resentment 

Need support on the above please contact us at smartcomplainz@outlook.com and we are happy to assist you

Link to original notification, click here

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