Web3 and Business to Consumer Electronic Commerce: Indian Competition Law Paradigm

Abstract

In a technologically competitive era, innovative businesses constitute the epitome of dynamic competition. Business to Consumer (B2C) online marketplaces are platform markets connecting sellers, buyers and advertisers through multi-sided environment utilizing user network effects. However, because of fourth industrial revolution, data driven businesses and COVID-19 pandemic, Web3 and the technological consequence, metaverse, has penetrated into regulating B2C electronic commerce as a techno-legal dynamism. From technological perspective, Web3 represents internet democratization through interoperability, encrypted communication and open protocols. Therefore, customers and sellers will not be dependent on centralized hierarchy based B2C platforms for visibility as criteria for successful transaction, also the objective of the recent Indian initiative, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). From a regulatory standpoint however, many questions arise. Big technology companies are invested in metaverse for instance, through Virtual Reality (VR). As per existing literature, they can engage in self-preferencing and exclusionary anti-competitive behavior, as customers can be compelled to purchase VR headsets of a particular company as indispensable way of accessing metaverse. Similarly, companies through predatory innovation can ensure incremental improvements in innovation and generate anti-competitive consequences. Further, horizontal anti-competitive agreements like cartels are plausible through the ONDC which is in infancy. Therefore, the researcher attempts to trace such practices by traversing through relevant case laws, legislative developments and scholarly work by firstly, delineating upon conceptual underpinnings of Web3 based B2C electronic commerce, secondly, by addressing the aforesaid research areas and lastly providing suitable suggestions with conclusion.