Parl panel reviews CCI's role amid Big Tech challenge to startups

Big stakeholders crowding the market, not allowing the startups to come up, says Par panel chairman

The Standing Committee on Finance is looking into the role of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in an evolving economy, particularly the digital landscape. “The number of challenges in the country and the big stakeholders crowding the market is a concern as it is not allowing the startups to come up,” Chairman of the committee, Member of Parliament, Bhartruhari Mahtab, told Business Standard.

 

The committee would delve into issues around crowding of the marketplace by big tech players and its impact it is having on startups. The panel has held one meeting so far, in which it discussed these issues with the Chairperson, CCI Ravneet Kaur.

 

The committee would study the proposed ex-ante regulations for the draft Digital Competition Bill prepared by the expert committee led by then secretary of corporate affairs ministry Manoj Govil.

 

In December 2022, a parliamentary committee chaired by Jayant Sinha had tabled a report which called for a ‘Digital Competition Act’ for a transparent and contestable digital ecosystem. It had also called for a series of clarifications and changes in the proposed Competition Amendment Bill 2022.

 

These ranged from specifying the method of calculating deal value of transactions and allowing cartels to access settlement mechanisms to introducing effects based analysis for CCI and director general before ascertaining anti-competitive behaviour.

 

The present deliberations of the standing committee would be taking into account the developments that have taken since and take a wider approach to the subject, sources said.

 

The draft Digital Competition Bill has proposed ex-ante regulations, which require digital companies to notify the CCI that they fulfil the criteria to qualify as Systemically Significant Digital Enterprises (SSDEs) based on certain qualitative and quantitative parameters.

 

According to officials, the government wants to limit the scope of the proposed regulations to the top few players only and keep the startups outside its purview.

 

Speaking at the CII Global Economic Policy Forum in December last year, Kaur had stressed that the government was very conscious of the fact that India is a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship with a large number of startups, unlike the European Union (EU), which has brought such laws.

 

“We have the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world. We use what’s done outside as a guide… We should work within the Indian economy, because our role is to provide a level playing field to promote sustained competition in Indian markets,” Kaur had said.