Consumer affairs mulling action against FMCG giants for failing to display best-before dates on their online portals

India’s quick commerce or quick commerce is a growing category, currently valued at $3.4 billion and is projected to triple to $10 billion by 2029.

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs is considering taking action against companies violating norms of specifying best-before date on online portals, said people with direct knowledge of the matter. This comes after the ministry sent notices to several e-commerce and quick commerce platforms last week. Now the ministry is probing if large fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies have also violated the norms, according to the people cited above. At the crux of the matter is a strategy adopted by some online portals to sell goods close to their expiry date.

The best-before date, also known as the expiry or expiration date, is the information that should be printed on a product specifying the date after which it should not be used.

The Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodity) Rules (PCR), as amended in 2017, obliges companies to specify the best-before date for products meant for human consumption and mandates e-commerce entities to declare this information for all pre-packaged commodities sold on their websites. However, it has been found that some of the leading platforms were not displaying these specifications on their portals. The ministry's focus now is on the in-house online delivery apps built by these large FMCG companies through which they sell their products directly to customers exclusively, the people cited above said.

The issue has also been raised by private survey company LocalCircles, which highlighted that most platforms violated this norm of displaying the best-before date and instead displayed the product's shelf life. The company conducted a survey in 2024, which found that 57 percent of consumers responding to the study noted that the best-before date of products was not specified on the portal. The ratio of consumers reporting such findings had increased from 50 percent in 2023.

India’s quick commerce, a segment of the shipments business that focuses on express deliveries, is a rapidly growing category, currently valued at $3.4 billion and projected to triple to $10 billion by 2029.

Moneycontrol had earlier reported that given the growing use of quick commerce, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation was looking for ways to collect price data from these platforms for its new consumer inflation series.