A platform is only as sound
as its onboarding.

Terms of use get treated as a formality and drafted like one. They are contracts, formed electronically, and the Indian Contract Act, 1872 governs them as it governs any other. Section 10A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 provides that a contract is not unenforceable merely because electronic means were used to communicate the proposal and its acceptance, which leaves the ordinary questions: was there an offer, an acceptance and consideration, and can the platform show what the user was presented with at the moment of acceptance. A term sitting behind a link the user never had to pass through is weaker than the same words in an affirmative acceptance step, and the difference tends to show up in evidence rather than in drafting. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 goes further and treats certain one-sided terms as unfair contracts, giving the State and National Commissions power to declare an unfair term null and void: excessive security deposits, disproportionate penalties for breach, unilateral termination without cause, and unreasonable restrictions on the consumer’s remedies. The effect of arbitration and exclusive jurisdiction clauses in consumer contracts has been litigated, and it cannot be assumed that they exclude the commissions.

A unilateral amendment right exercised without notice may be open to challenge as an unfair contract term. Material changes are usually notified, applied prospectively, and the superseded versions retained, because a transaction is judged against the terms in force on its date.

The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 apply to goods and services sold over digital or electronic networks. They set obligations for e-commerce entities generally, with separate duties for marketplace and inventory models. Every entity has to publish its legal name, registered address and website details, and customer care contact information. It has to appoint a grievance officer, publish that officer’s name, contact details and designation, and acknowledge and redress complaints within the periods the Rules prescribe. And it must not adopt unfair trade practices in the course of its business, on the platform or anywhere else. Those are entity-level duties, and they are the ones that can be checked from outside the business.

The transaction-level requirements are where the product team does the work. Listings must carry the total price with a break-up of charges, the country of origin, expiry or best-before information where that applies, and the seller’s details including a grievance contact. The Rules also restrict cancellation charges where a consumer cancels after confirming a purchase, and the wording of that restriction should be read against the current text. Prices cannot be manipulated to secure unreasonable profit, and consumers within the same class cannot be discriminated against unreasonably. Where products are ranked, the main parameters behind the ranking have to be disclosed. No e-commerce entity may falsely represent itself as a consumer or post reviews about goods and services, and marketplaces have to record seller undertakings on the accuracy of descriptions. Almost all of that lands on a listing template rather than on a document, so the work belongs with whoever controls the page the customer is looking at, with legal review sitting next to them rather than downstream of them.

The seller agreement is the platform’s main instrument of risk transfer, and much of its value sits in the schedules rather than the body. Identity and eligibility verification comes first: constitution documents, goods and services tax registration where applicable, bank account verification, beneficial ownership, and whatever product-specific licence the category demands, such as a food business licence or the registrations attached to cosmetics and electronics. Then the substantive obligations. Sellers should warrant that listings are accurate and that goods conform to applicable product, labelling and safety requirements, that they hold the intellectual property rights they are exercising or a licence to use them, and that they will honour the platform’s published return and warranty terms. The agreement wants an indemnity that survives termination, provision for suspension and delisting on defined grounds, allocation of chargeback and return costs, settlement and set-off mechanics, and a data protection annex reflecting the seller’s role in relation to customer data. Suspension grounds are usually drafted so they can be exercised before all the facts are known.

Verification records are of little value unless they can be produced later. In a dispute nobody asks whether the platform had an onboarding policy. They ask whether it followed that policy for this seller.

Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 exempts an intermediary from liability for third-party information, subject to conditions. Among them, its function has to be limited to access or hosting, it must not initiate the transmission, select the receiver or modify the information, and it has to observe the due diligence the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 require, including grievance redressal and record retention. Protection is also lost where the intermediary conspires in or abets the unlawful act, and where it fails to act expeditiously on actual knowledge, which has been read as knowledge acquired through a court order or a government notification. The more a platform curates, prices, warehouses and brands the transaction, the harder the description of a limited function becomes to sustain.

Return and refund policy is the document customers actually read. A published policy the operations team cannot deliver is frequently the basis of a deficiency of service complaint.