October 15 2021:  A major reporting by Reuters correspondents  based in London and  New Delhi  two days ago, alleges that e-commerce giant Amazon ran a systematic campaign to boost its own product lines in India, by creating cheaper knockoffs and manipulating search results. 
The  news wire agency sources its  conclusion after examining thousands of pages of Amazon’s internal documents which allegedly show that Amazon’s private brand teams in India exploited data at amazon.in to copy  popular products by third parties.
The brands said to be targeted include Prestige kitchen ware and Peter England and Louis Phillipe menswear. The full report is here Amazon copied products and rigged search results, documents show (reuters.com)
An early reaction  has come from Sijo Kuruvilla George, Executive Director, Alliance of Digital India Foundation a  think tank for India’s digital start-ups: ADIF condemns Amazon’s predatory playbook of copying, rigging and killing Indian brands, urges Government for timely intervention. The Reuters investigation brings to light Amazon’s blatant disregard for competition laws, intellectual property rights and disgraceful predatory practices. The manner in which the e-commerce giant has targeted the Indian market and leading brands in the country is highly deplorable and brings into question the credibility of Amazon as a good faith operator in the Indian startup ecosystem.These findings go on to validate the allegations and fears of various stakeholders and serve as incriminating evidence…. 
The findings bring to light that it's a systematic design – a playbook if you will – by Amazon to predate and kill competition by weaponizing every tool at its disposal. These findings serve as further fillip for the intent of the Government to introduce reforms in the e-commerce marketplace.