Constantly Updating Toolkit To Address Digital Market Challenges: CCI Chief

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) chairperson Ashok Kumar Gupta on Saturday (October 15) reportedly said that the competition watchdog was constantly updating its ‘antitrust and merger’ toolkit to address challenges related to digital markets. 

In doing so, he said, the CCI was looking to benchmark itself with global best practices.

Gupta made the comments while speaking at a conference organised by the CCI and industry body ASSOCHAM.

He also said that the CCI was in the process of setting up a dedicated Digital Markets and Data Unit (DMDU). Addressing the gathering, Gupta also underlined the competition watchdog’s plans to recruit data scientists and algorithm experts to fill positions in the new unit. 

“As market regulators, we cannot overlook the challenges that market power and business practices of gatekeeper platforms pose to other market participants – those who are competing with them and, more so, those who deal with them (and rely upon them),” he was quoted as saying by PTI. 

The CCI chairperson also called on businesses to adopt ‘proactive competition compliance’ as an important element of their corporate governance policy. 

Noting that the competition watchdog was conscious of regulatory cholesterol created due to onerous implementation of rules, Gupta said that the commission’s endeavour was to regulate but not burden businesses with unnecessary compliance.

Potshots At Tech Giants?

The CCI chairperson’s veiled comments were largely directed at tech giants that have been under the scrutiny in the country for various reasons. In the recent past, players such as Apple, Google, Meta, Zomato, Swiggy, Ola, and Uber, have come under the CCI’s radar. 

Gupta’s statement came a day after the Supreme Court (SC) ruled in favour of the competition watchdog in the alleged privacy infringement case against social media giant Meta (formerly Facebook). With this, the SC effectively gave its nod for a probe into WhatsApp’s 2021 privacy policy update. 

The CCI and tech giants previously also sparred over a host of issues. The competition watchdog has already launched multiple probes into Google for abuse of dominance in news aggregation space, its in-app billing policy on the Play Store, and payments service Google Pay. 

The CCI was also involved in court cases against Meta over the contentious 2021 WhatsApp privacy policy, while it also launched a probe into the conduct of foodtech platforms Zomato and Swiggy.

In the past, it also pulled up ecommerce giant Amazon in a probe alleging market dominance, but exonerated the US-based major later. Late last year, it also dismissed a plea against cab aggregator platform Uber over alleged abuse of dominant position.

The onboarding of new experts in emerging domains such as data science and algorithms will give more teeth to the CCI to better prosecute the case and conduct exhaustive research into the giants. 

Last month, Gupta also said that the tech giants had control over user data to an extent that it could help them change the course of consumer behaviour online. 

As per reports, the government was also mulling to come out with behavioural norms for tech giants in the digital markets. In August, the Centre also introduced the Competition Amendment Bill, 2022 which proposed a broader framework to deal with anti-competitive practices as well as mergers and acquisitions.