Analysing the Ex-ante Regulations in India’s Digital Competition Bill and Its Effects on Indian Business Interests

The digitization of economic activity has important socio-economic development implications and at the same time creates challenges for antitrust analysis. These implications and challenges have been met differently in jurisdictions around the world. This paper makes a comparison of the exante regulations between India’s Draft on Digital Competition Bill with that of the European Union’s (EU’s) Digital Markets Act (DMA). India, like many technologically conscious jurisdictions, is introducing more demanding ex-ante regulations for its digital economy. The draft Bill centred on the work of a Digital Markets Economy; India’s proposals are defined by an explicit commitment to ‘pro-competition’ regulation. This article traces the evolution and emerging design of the forthcoming Indian digital markets regime in comparison with the EU. The article proposes to expand the competition enforcement by adopting a ‘rule-making’ approach to reduce the market-wide uncertainty, and cost of litigation and reduce unexpected outcomes. The latter is founded on a hybrid-mutual influence approach and intends to reduce the current inconsistencies existing between the regulatory and competition bodies in India.