The country’s competition watchdog has disposed of a complaint alleging that a food delivery platform abused its market dominance through unfair pricing.
Swiggy acts only as an intermediary and its role is limited to providing access to a communication system over which information made available by third parties is transmitted, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said in its order issued on Friday.
Hence, there is no contravention under Section 4 of the Competition Act, which related to abuse of dominant position, it said.
CCI, however, directed Swiggy to “give sufficient disclosures on its platform that it is not involved in fixation of price of the products/menus of the restaurants on its platform, so as to allay misgivings, if any, in the minds of any stakeholders including the consumers”.
The information filed by advocates Prachi Aggarwal and Tushar Sharma alleged that Swiggy was charging customers much higher prices than what they would have paid if they had directly ordered from the restaurant. They submitted bills of restaurants and screenshots of the Swiggy website to indicate the difference in prices.
In its response, Swiggy said it has no control over the prices mentioned on its platform as restaurants directly upload the same onto the platform.
Further, Swiggy said its merchant terms require restaurants to maintain price parity for products offered on the platform and through any other sales channel. Also, when customers bring up the issue of any discrepancy in prices, it is escalated to the concerned restaurant.
“The Informants have stated that generally the customers are unaware of the rates charged by a particular restaurant in offline mode and thus, cannot compare the same with the rates displayed on the platform,” CCI said in its order. “The customers are blinded and made to believe that only delivery charges are applicable and are completely unaware of the inflated prices which are unreasonable and varyingly apply to various dishes,” it said.
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