In India, the Committee on Digital Competition Law was established by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) in February 2023 to evaluate the need for an ex-ante (preventive) regulatory framework for digital markets in India. The committee submitted its report to the MCA in February 2024, and this report was published for consultation on 12 March 2024. Annexed to it was a draft Digital Competition Bill giving India an ex-ante regime for large technology platforms, modelled on the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
The report marked a significant potential shift in India’s approach to digital competition, from relying primarily on the Competition Act, 2002 to address anti-competitive conduct after it occurs, towards imposing obligations on major digital platforms before such conduct can distort the market. The Committee was itself set up in response to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance’s 53rd Report of December 2022, which identified ten anti-competitive practices common to large digital platforms and called for a dedicated ex-ante law.
Three years on, the Bill has not reached Parliament, while the frameworks it drew on have moved into active enforcement. In India, digital competition continues to be governed principally through the existing competition law framework, with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) addressing concerns on a case-by-case basis. The report and draft Bill therefore remain the principal blueprint for what a dedicated ex-ante digital competition regime in India could look like.
- The Committee found the ex-post framework under the Competition Act, 2002 structurally too slow for digital markets. By the time the CCI finishes investigating a complaint, the market has usually settled in the dominant firm’s favour. Its answer was a separate law setting rules out in advance for nine listed “core digital services” – search, social networking, video sharing, messaging, operating systems, browsers, cloud, advertising and online marketplaces.
- Only the largest firms would be caught. A company would become a “Systemically Significant Digital Enterprise” if, for three years running, it passed a financial test, Indian turnover of INR 4,000 crore, global turnover of USD 30 billion, Indian gross merchandise value of INR 16,000 crore, or global market capitalisation of USD 75 billion, and a user test of one crore users or ten thousand business users in India. Firms would self-report to the CCI, which could also designate companies that missed the numbers but still held sway.
- Once designated, a platform could no longer rank its own products above competitors’, use sellers’ confidential data to compete against them, combine personal data across services without consent, block rival apps, lock default settings, stop businesses advertising cheaper deals elsewhere, or force users to take a bundled service. Breaches could cost up to 10% of worldwide group turnover, with senior managers personally liable.
How Europe and the UK do it
- The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is the model India borrowed from, and it has teeth. After 2025 fines on Apple and Meta, the Commission’s first review on 28 April 2026 found the law working and needing no amendment. On 23 July 2026, it fined Google EUR 890 million – EUR 460 million for favouring its own services in search results and EUR 430 million for blocking developers from pointing users to cheaper payment options. Those are the very practices India’s draft targeted. Two differences matter: the EU requires both user thresholds to be crossed, and lets a firm contest designation. The draft did neither.
- Britain went another way. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the Competition and Markets Authority designates a firm as having “strategic market status” – open only to firms above GBP 1 billion of UK turnover, then writes rules tailored to it rather than a common code. Google was designated for search in October 2025, and Google and Apple for mobile platforms, but the first binding rules arrived only in June 2026. Slower, better fitted, and closer to India’s own plan.
Why Washington is Pushing Back
- The U.S. now treats foreign platform regulation as a trade issue, not a regulatory one. A February 2025 presidential memorandum ordered a response to overseas fines on US technology firms; in August 2025 the President threatened tariffs on countries maintaining digital taxes or regulation; in January 2026 visa restrictions hit European officials who had worked on the EU’s digital laws. Hours after the aforementioned Google fine, the US Trade Representative said the DMA would be investigated under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 with substantial tariffs to follow.
- The action against Brazil shows this is not only rhetoric. A Section 301 investigation into its digital trade practices opened in July 2025; in June 2026 the US Trade Representative found those practices actionable, and a 25% tariff on Brazilian goods took effect on 22 July 2026. India has already dropped its equalisation levy under comparable pressure.
- Ronin Legal has tracked this conflict from the outset in our series on the Trump administration and European tech legislation, covering the EU’s early privacy and antitrust actions against US technology firms in Part 1, the arrival of the DMA, DSA and digital services taxes alongside the first U.S. objections in Part 2, the 2025 enforcement actions against Meta, Apple and TikTok in Part 3, and the compliance costs, tariff threats and legislative retaliation that followed in Part 4.
Where the Proposed Indian Law Stands Now
- Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance recommended on 11 August 2025 that the draft be withdrawn and rewritten. Its objections: thresholds low enough to catch Indian companies still finding their feet, no way to contest designation, compliance costs falling on startups, and overlap with the IT Act and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. The CCI backed the approach, but only for the very largest platforms and clearly anti-competitive conduct.
- In November 2025, the Ministry commissioned a market study to test the thresholds and list of services against real market data. The Bill remains in consultation with no timeline; the CCI handles digital markets case by case.
The Practical Takeaway
India’s Digital Competition Bill remains a work in progress, but the case for regulating digital markets before competitive harm takes hold remains firmly on the agenda. As India revisits the draft, the experience of the EU and UK, alongside growing US resistance to foreign regulation of technology companies, will shape the balance between effective oversight, proportionate regulation and wider economic and trade considerations.
Authors: Shantanu Mukherjee, Varun Alase
