Drinks, beverage brands to lose health tag in e-retail

The Ministry, on April 10, directed the platforms to do so, saying there is no such thing as ‘health drink’ defined under the country’s food and safety standards laws. Accordingly, the government has asked all e-commerce companies to remove all such drinks and beverages from the health drinks category from their portals.

“National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), a statutory body constituted under Section (3) of the Commission of Protection of Child Rights (CPCR) Act 2005, after its inquiry under Section 14 of CRPC Act 2005, concluded that there is no health drink defined under FSS Act 2006, rules and regulations submitted by FSSAI and Mondelez India Food,” the Commerce and Industry Ministry’s advisory to all e-commerce companies, said.

Analysts say manufacturers of these brands will not get impacted, as they do not label their products as a health product in their packaging, but in case they have advertisement inventories showing their products as ‘healthy’ and ‘nutritional’, then they will have to withdraw them.

However, since directions by the food safety standards regulator, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), already exist for branding and advertising, it is unlikely there would be any substantial inventory.

In the case of marketplace platforms like Flipkart and Amazon, since they do not hold inventories, it is the sellers on these platforms who will need to make the change in the category. This may take some time as it will need a change in technology solutions. Sellers will need to login into their accounts through which they list their products on these platforms, and make the change.

However, e-commerce platforms like BigBasket, which is an inventory-led firm, will need to implement the measure faster as the onus of making the change will fall on them.

As on Saturday, all e-commerce platforms were still categorising these products as health and nutritional drinks.