Business
oi-Ashish Rana
India’s consumer court has taken a strict action against misleading business digital platforms like IndiGo, Zepto, FirstCry, Physics Wallah and SpiceJet, for using ‘dark patterns’ that influences or manipulate consumer decisions.
India’s CCPA fined companies like Zepto, Physics Wallah, IndiGo, and FirstCry approximately 20 lakh rupees for using manipulative ‘dark patterns’ on digital platforms, aiming to increase transparency in online consumer decisions.
The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has collected around 20 lakh rupees in penalty from the companies that violated the rules, Rajya Sabha inform on Tuesday. The move is a part of make online shopping and digital services more transparent for consumers.
What Are Dark Patterns and Why Are They Banned?
The Dark patterns are design technique to be used on website and mobile apps to ask users to make choices that they may not intent to pick. To tackle these situations, the Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns Guidelines, 2023 decided to identify 13 blocked patterns, including false urgency, basket sneaking, subscription traps, drip pricing, confirm shaming and trick questions as well.
The Consumer Affairs Department has also issued an advisory in June 2025 asking e-commerce companies to conduct self-audits and remove such kind of tricks from their platforms.
Zepto, Physics Wallah and IndiGo Among Firms Penalised
The grocery quick delivery platform Zepto Marketplace has been fined by 7 Lakh rupees after CCPA found that this app shows lower prices and later add handling charges and membership fees. The regulator body said that handling fee as drip pricing and automatic addition of membership amount to basket pricing. However, government said that now Zepto has removed these practices.
Even Edtech platform like Physics Wallah has been fined 5 lakh rupees for automatically pre-selected donation to ‘PW Foundation’. CCPA also objected the mandatory collection of personal information before users can access free courses. Now government has confirmed that companies has paid the penalties and stopped the dark patterns.
Other Platforms Also Face Action
Even platform like BookMyShow has removed a pre-ticket 1 Rs donation from its platform, CCPA also fined IndiGo’s for its app for their opt message “No I will take risk”, which now has been replaced with “No, I will not add to the trip.”
CCPA also fined platforms like FirstCry (2 lakh Rs), PharmaEasy (1 lakh Rs), McAfee (1 lakh Rs), SpiceJet (1 lakh Rs) and coaching platform Anuj Jindal (3 lakh Rs). This violation also includes hidden charges, misleading countdown timers, and forced subscriptions.
