Reliance Industries pitched a plan to have a separate e-commerce marketplace for third-party sellers and, instead, integrated thousands of independent sellers into its existing platform JioMart as the government has put the proposed e-commerce policy on the backburner.

The company is building JioMart as a full-fledged marketplace with presence across categories to take on market leaders Amazon and Flipkart.

Earlier, Reliance was building JioMarket as a separate platform for third-party sellers to comply with the draft e-commerce policy that proposed to prohibit marketplace operators from having related parties or associated enterprises as sellers on their platforms. JioMarket was expected to go live before this Diwali.

Reliance is reportedly working on onboarding around 1,000 independent sellers to its platform. The sellers will reportedly operate on JioMart till the government announces its e-commerce policy and then will be shifted to the new platform once it is launched.

Independent sellers are reportedly being offered the same terms as Reliance Retail entities. This includes a similar commission, free deliveries and no minimum order value.

As per media reports, the ecommerce policy has been put on hold due to differences of opinion among different ministries.

JioMart has already onboarded more than 15,000 third-party independent sellers and direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands that Reliance Retail had roped over the last three to four months for JioMarket, whereby total assortment on the platform has gone up 80 times as compared to last year's Diwali.

JioMart has started a month-long festive sale, running discounts matching those of Amazon and Flipkart with some undertaken by the third-party sellers and D2C brands.

Reliance has roped in several talents from e-commerce players. For instance, Varaganti was earlier managing director of Prione Business Services, an erstwhile joint venture between Amazon and NR Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures, that housed Cloudtail – one of the largest sellers on Amazon India for several years. Prione was dissolved earlier this year.