Even before the South Asian e-commerce behemoth, Shopee can put its foot in India, local traders have started raising red flags.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to seem into the entry of Shopee stating that it’ll send shock waves through the offline traders’ community which is yet to get over the “unfair trade practices adopted by foreign-funded e-commerce companies”.

“Preferential treatment to favoured sellers, private labelling, unfair and anti-competitive business models with big-ticket manufacturers, deep discounting and flash sales became the mainstay of those e-commerce platforms and it’s highly unlikely that tiny traders can consistently withstand these continuous assaults from such foreign e-commerce companies. Shopee’s entry into India, only means furthering these unfair trade practices,” said Praveen Khandelwal, National Secretary General CAIT during a letter addressed to the PM.

Last month, a Reuters report stated that Singapore-headquartered Sea Ltd which runs Shopee has launched a recruitment campaign for sellers to sell on “Shopee India” and is ramping up hiring within the country.

While the $172 billion South Asian Group features a team in India, it doesn’t offer its e-commerce service here. However, it runs gaming services in India.

Interestingly, CAIT has also flagged Sea’s Chinese affiliations. Post the Galvan Valley clash last year, India has become very strict about foreign direct investment coming from China.

“Sea Holdings has significant ownership (almost 25%) by Tencent (a known Chinese investment firm). Also, the founding father of Sea, Forrest Li is originally Chinese but became a naturalised Singaporean only a couple of years back. Sea uses Tencent cloud to store data,” Khandelwal said.