April 09, 2020, Kathmandu, Nepal
Yesterday, Thulo.com accused Sastodeal of Intellectual Property Theft. It said its images were used in Sastodeal’s website. It also accused Sastodeal of copying its description of products. Bibek Karki, Chairman, and Co-founder of Thulo.com posted a post yesterday in a popular Facebook group, Entrepreneurs of Nepal accusing Sastodeal of intellectual property theft.
After the issue became viral, Amun Thapa, CEO of Sastodeal posted publicly on Facebook about the topic. In his post, he has stated that Sastodeal itself doesn’t put images and descriptions on the website and vendors might have unknowingly put the image created by Thulo.com. He made it clear that Sastodeal must provide its backend to its vendors and they only approve the products based on pricing and seller’s authenticity. He added that Sastodeal is taking proactive steps to reduce such problems in the future.
He accepted that Thulo.com had contacted Sastodeal on the concern and Sastodeal requested to provide the links to the products so that it can address it.
He also apologized for not responding to the concerns addressed by Thulo.com immediately as it had limited resources.
Here we present you the post posted by Amun Thapa in response to Thulo.com’s accusation. In his own words.
“Issued in public interest.
We understand the concerns shared by Thulo.com that Sastodeal.com used some of its images without permission. They had also contacted us regarding this issue about a week back and we were reviewing it. A marketplace like ours have thousands of vendors and a massive catalogue. Vendors are given backend panel to upload products and a moderate Quality Check (QC) is done at the company level (mainly on pricing) and on the product and seller’s authenticity before being approved.
When Thulo.com reached out to us last week, we had requested them to provide us with links for the products so we can review and remove it. Had we received such links and possibly supporting evidence, we would have without a doubt removed the content from our site. We were taken aback when this was publicly posted and shared with different media.
We have been in Thulo’s position many times before. We find our photographs, our content and even our advertisements used by many other websites. We share their frustration and concerns. It is also a global issue faced by leading ecommerce companies.
While it is very difficult to block these issues, at Sastodeal we are now taking proactive steps to reduce or eliminate such issues in the near future. We believe it first starts with intent – for all of us in this ecosystem to value each other’s hard work and resolve issues together. Second, we are looking at systems that can filter out such content in future. And third, we have to educate our vendors.
We apologize for not responding to the concern addressed by Thulo immediately. As you are aware, Sastodeal is supplying daily essentials and relief materials with limited resources. Each day, we are concerned about the safety of our employees, management and delivery heroes (many of whom haven’t been home in the past 2 weeks).
Again, we apologize if any of our vendors may have used someone else’s images. Having worked in this industry for the past 8 years, we have grown together with our vendors, partners and our customers. We know if someone has made a mistake here, it was unintentional and we will work with them to rectify it.
Thank you.
Sastodeal.com”
Wanna read in his post in facebook?
Also Read: Thulo.com Accuses SastoDeal Of Intellectual Property Theft!