Bengaluru, NFAPost: Amazon India and Walmart-owned Flipkart have received a fresh mandate to share their site’s source code and core-business algorithms with the Indian government. This is in adherence to the new ecommerce policy that seeks to encourage competitiveness in the market and help boost the Indian start-ups, Bloomberg reports.
The draft bill also seeks info on whether an explainable AI (XAI) is being used by the tech companies and the business categories that require ecommerce companies to store data locally or support localisation.
NOTE: Explainable AI is a type of AI that makes solutions and methods understandable for humans.
The new ecommerce policy is yet to be finalised, before enabling access to the public. The Bloomberg report, however, adds that the government will seek more transparency and information through the data access mandate that’s an integral part of previous content policing and data protection bills pertaining to tech companies.
The key aim of this bill is to prevent monopoly of top tech companies while enabling Indian start-ups to grow under the supervision of an ecommerce watchdog.
Amazon and Flipkart will be eagerly monitoring the status of this bill as it critically impacts their business and future prospects. A 72-hour deadline window has been mandated by the Indian Govt. for companies to hand over user data.
The Govt. directive clearly demands open access to non-personal data of companies. However, the top tech firms are in a dilemma as it would infringe on their rights to protect the secrecy of the business algorithms.
