DK Suresh, Former Member of Parliament and President, Bangalore Milk Union Ltd. (Bamul), urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to investigate the predatory pricing of milk by fast-track trading platforms and its impact on dairy farmers and cooperative institutions.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mr. Suresh sought to draw attention to Flipkart Minutes’ recent promotional campaign, which advertised milk at ₹1 per half liter as part of a customer acquisition campaign. “Milk is not a regular retail product. It is a subsistence agricultural commodity produced daily by millions of small and marginal dairy farmers who depend on the sale of milk as a stable source of income. The advertised selling price of ₹1 per liter appears to be well below the economic costs of procurement, processing, packaging, transportation, cold chain management and retail distribution of milk under normal market conditions and retail distribution of milk may not appear to be supported through commercial platforms or may not be available investor-backed promotional strategies,” he added.
Mr Suresh said this raised concerns under Section 4 of the Competition Act 2002, which prohibits abuse of a dominant position. It defines predatory pricing as selling goods or services below cost with the intent to limit competition or eliminate competitors such as KMF’s Nandini and Bamul. While promotional pricing is common in competitive markets, the use of extremely below-cost pricing for basic agricultural commodities raises important competition law concerns, he added.
He sought an immediate investigation into deep discounting practices in the sale of milk and other basic commodities produced by farmers through flash commerce platforms and probed whether such campaigns constituted predatory pricing. He called for an assessment of the potential impact of such pricing strategies on farmers, cooperative institutions and small retailers, especially in markets where fast-paced commerce platforms are expanding rapidly.
Published – 15 March 2026 22:23 IST
