Mamaearth Parent Honasa Tops Ad Violators List For FY24: ASCI

Mamaearth parent Honasa has emerged as the biggest advertising violator of FY24 with total instances of violation marked at 187, according to the Advertising Standards Council of India’s annual report for FY24.

Honasa’s other brands Dr. Sheth’s Skin and Hair Clinic, Aqualogica, The Derma Co. and Ayuga also feature in ASCI’s list of advertising violators. 

The report also calls out unicorns such as 1MG’s HealthKart, FirstCry, Lenskart, Flipkart as well as Flipkart-owned Myntra, Urban Company, as well as listed companies such as Nykaa, Zomato, Zoomcar, Netflix India, Apple India among others. 

Outside of D2C brands in the beauty and personal care categories, gaming platforms MyTeam 11, Dream 11, Rummy24 feature prominently in the report. Interestingly, edtech unicorns Physicswallah and Unacademy were also named as violating ASCI’s guidelines on misleading ads and influencer-led content. 

To come up with this report, the ad watchdog examined 10,093 complaints and investigated 8299 advertisements. Of these, 81% of violations were regarding misleading claims, followed by ads that promoted harmful situations or products at 34%. 

Sector-wise, healthcare violated the most contributing to 19% of cases at 1,249, followed by 17% illegal offshore betting at 1,311 and 13% personal care at 1,064. Apart from this, conventional education, food and beverage and realty accounted for 12%, 10% and 7% of the overall violations.

Manisha Kapoor, CEO & Secretary General of ASCI, said, “2023-24 has been a truly challenging year, and ASCI stepped up to this by focusing our efforts on digital. 3200 advertisements were shared with various regulators, such as MIB, Ayush, and MahaRera, for direct violations of the law. We see this as a continuing area of focus. With the highest number of violative ads seen online, advertisers and platforms must work more closely with regulators and self-regulators to keep consumers protected.”