A supplier dispute that led to arrest warrants against five senior Foodpanda executives has drawn attention to the commercial relationship between Bangladesh's digital retailers and the smaller businesses that supply them.
The dispute comes as online retail becomes a larger part of Bangladesh's consumer economy. According to estimates from ecommerce market intelligence provider ECDB, Bangladesh's physical-goods ecommerce market generated about $6 billion in revenue in 2025.
A separate Research and Markets estimate valued Bangladesh's broader B2C ecommerce market at $7.41 billion in 2025 and forecasts it will reach $9.65 billion by 2029.
Foodpanda operates across parts of that expanding market through restaurant delivery and Pandamart, its quick-commerce grocery and retail operation.
A Dhaka court on September 23 issued warrants against Foodpanda Bangladesh co-founder and managing director Syeda Ambareen Reza and four other officials after accepting police investigation reports in two cases alleging fraud and criminal breach of trust.
The other accused are co-founder and director Zubair Siddiky, Pandamart director Mohammad Tabrej Khan, Head of Category Delara Farooq and Senior Manager Mohammad Sajadul Haque.
All five have secured anticipatory bail from the High Court. Foodpanda and its sister concern Delivery Hero Stores Bangladesh deny the allegations, saying the cases arose from a commercial dispute that has been turned into criminal proceedings.
No finding of guilt has been made against the executives.
Businessman Shihab Mahmud Bashir filed four cases in July 2025. His company, IPLE Electronics, supplied household and kitchen accessories, mobile accessories and other products to Pandamart.
Bashir alleges IPLE supplied about 2.5 crore taka of goods between June 2022 and September 2024 but was paid about 1.5 crore taka, leaving nearly 1 crore taka outstanding.
His complaints also allege that fake return challans were prepared to classify supplied products as damaged and that about 10 lakh taka was deducted for VAT, tax and advertising expenses. He further alleges that his representative was threatened while seeking payment.
Foodpanda disputes his account.
Ambareen said IPLE was one of several suppliers to Delivery Hero Stores and that the company stopped doing business with Bashir after problems emerged.
She said Bashir instead owed money to Delivery Hero Stores and that a separate case had been filed under the Negotiable Instruments Act over dishonoured cheques.
“In retaliation, he initiated four cases against senior leadership abusing the criminal justice system of Bangladesh,” Ambareen wrote on her verified Facebook page.
She said police investigated all four cases and two reports found no criminal elements involving Foodpanda employees. The warrants relate to the other two cases, in which police investigation reports were accepted by the court.
The competing claims will be tested through the legal process. But the dispute also raises a broader commercial issue: how inventory risk, payment delays, returns and deductions are divided between large digital retailers and their suppliers.
For smaller manufacturers, importers and food producers, digital retailers provide access to large customer bases and established distribution networks.
But the commercial terms can also leave suppliers financing part of a retailer's working capital or carrying the risk of unsold inventory.
Purchase orders, credit periods, return policies, damaged stock, promotional charges and tax deductions determine where that risk ultimately falls.
One former Pandamart supplier, writing publicly in Facebook after the Foodpanda warrants were reported, alleged that his company encountered several such problems in 2021.
The businessman said his company supplied meat and fish to Pandamart and alleged that 3 per cent advance income tax was deducted from its payments even though he believed the products were exempt under the relevant government order.
He also alleged that Pandamart continued ordering fish despite weak sales and later sought to return products bought about three months earlier.
By then, he said, the fish were unsellable. Their cost was nevertheless deducted from his company's bill, leaving it with a loss of almost 300,000 taka.
Daily Waadaa has not independently verified the account. It is unrelated to Bashir's cases and is not evidence in those proceedings.
It does, however, illustrate the commercial issues at the core of many supplier relationships: who bears the cost of unsold goods, how long products can be returned and what deductions a retailer can make from supplier payments.
Those questions matter more as the sector expands. ECDB estimates that online sales still account for no more than 5% of Bangladesh's overall retail market, despite generating about $6 billion in physical-goods ecommerce revenue last year.
That leaves considerable scope for digital retailers to expand their purchasing from manufacturers, importers and smaller suppliers.
Bangladesh has already seen the consequences of supplier-payment problems on a much larger scale.
Evaly, the failed ecommerce platform, owed at least 408 crore taka to 1,026 sellers. Most were owed between 5 lakh and 30 lakh taka, while about 70 sellers had outstanding bills exceeding 1 crore taka each.
Shwapno said Evaly owed it about 5.6 crore taka, while Partex Beverage was owed about 5.8 crore taka.
Smaller businesses had less capacity to absorb such losses. One merchant said 15 lakh taka remained outstanding, representing a significant investment in his business.
As unpaid bills accumulated, many merchants stopped supplying Evaly on credit.
The circumstances surrounding Evaly were different from the current Foodpanda dispute, and there is no evidence that Foodpanda faces comparable merchant liabilities or financial problems.
The comparison however is relevant to supplier exposure: when a digital retailer buys on credit, its suppliers can become significant unsecured creditors.
Bangladesh tightened oversight of digital commerce after the problems at Evaly and several other ecommerce businesses in 2021.
The Commerce Ministry's Digital Commerce Operation Guidelines 2021 remain part of the regulatory framework for the sector. The ministry was still publishing the guidelines on its website in 2025.
The guidelines cover payments, deliveries, refunds and relationships between digital marketplaces and merchants.
Under the rules, a marketplace generally has to pay a third-party seller, after deducting agreed commissions or charges, within 10 days of receiving payment for the goods — unless the marketplace and merchant have agreed otherwise.
That exception is important for disputes such as those involving suppliers to digital retailers. It leaves businesses considerable room to negotiate their own payment periods, return conditions, promotional expenses and other commercial terms.
The guidelines are not the only rules governing those relationships.
The Sale of Goods Act 1930 governs contracts for the sale of goods and operates alongside the Contract Act 1872.
It allows contracts to provide for immediate or deferred delivery and payment, while questions such as when ownership passes, the condition of goods and contractual obligations can depend on the terms agreed between buyer and seller.
The Competition Act 2012 adds another layer. It prohibits agreements involving the production, supply, distribution, storage or acquisition of goods or services where they adversely affect competition.
The law also covers practices such as exclusive supply and distribution arrangements in specified circumstances.
A disagreement over an invoice, return or deduction does not, by itself, amount to a competition-law violation. But the legislation becomes relevant where contractual practices involve anti-competitive agreements or abuse of market power.
Sagor Hasnath, owner of a agro-farm which supplies meat to digital retailers told Waadaa that the current regulatory structure leaves a lot of gaps in much of the day-to-day relationship between a digital retailer and supplier to their commercial contract.
“There is still no comprehensive framework on to ensure when invoices must be settled, when goods may be returned, who carries losses on damaged or expired inventory and which costs can be deducted from payments if a dispute arises between a supplier and digital; retailer,” said Hasnath.
Afif Sarker, a UK-based Bangladeshi lawyer, told Daily Waadaa that a commercial contract “can be legally valid while leaving one party with considerably greater negotiating power”.
“For digital retail, that makes the wording and enforcement of supplier agreements particularly important,” he said.
Afif said the Foodpanda cases had not established wrongdoing by the company or its executives.
“But they have shown how the lack of best practices over payments, returns and deductions between a large digital retailer and a supplier can escalate into criminal litigation,” he said.
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