India's Digital Competition Bill: Unlocking innovation and fair competition

India’s digital growth story so far is indeed impressive.

By Kush Amlani 

In his recent Independence Day address, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on homegrown digital startups to step up. His message reflects a growing recognition that the foundations of India’s digital economy must be competitive and open for startups to enter and thrive. India’s digital growth story so far is indeed impressive.

It remains a top market for start-ups and unicorns - the third largest in the world - with more than 100 unicorns and 30,000+ tech startups. Despite this undoubted success, questions remain about how open this ecosystem is to new, truly disruptive, innovation. While many factors play a role, one key obstacle looms large: entrenched platform dominance.

Over a decade ago, Mozilla and partners launched a new generation of entry-level smartphones to challenge the dominance of Android and the growth of iOS. At its core was a new operating system based on Mozilla’s open source Gecko browser engine: Firefox OS. The product was conceived to bring the freedom and unbounded innovation of the open web to mobile users everywhere. Sadly, the project failed - the reasons were complex, but one obvious factor was the platform power that fortressed the market against new entrants.
This is more than hindsight — the same dynamics persist today. Android’s supremacy in the mobile ecosystem effectively sidelines independent alternatives. Apple forces rival browsers on iOS to build on Apple’s WebKit engine, stripping them of true functional and innovation parity. On Windows, Microsoft continues to thwart user choice. These self-preferencing practices deter choice and lock in incumbents. And in the age of AI agents, such dynamics will only further entrench existing power.

Digital Competition Regulation: An Essential Part of the Solution

Governments and parliaments in a number of countries (including India, the UK, Japan, Korea, Australia, and the EU) have recognised that enforcement of existing antitrust laws can be ineffective against the speed and network effects of digital markets. They have rejected the lazy argument that all regulation hinders innovation. Instead, many, including India’s Committee on Digital Competition Law, have recognised that well-designed and proportionate competition regulation, co-created in a “participative antitrust” model between the government, industry, and consumer representatives, can unlock innovation and growth in their digital economies.

The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) was the first of these efforts and it is already having an impact. In the browser space, we have seen that putting choice in the hands of consumers has shown clear results: within a year, Firefox usage on iOS doubled across the EU, and independent browsers like Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, and DuckDuckGo have also seen sharp growth. At Mozilla, we are also seeing extremely high retention of new Firefox users — showing that those who take up the choice offered by the DMA browser choice screens are sticking with their decisions.

And browser choice is not the only benefit flowing to consumers, developers, and businesses in the EU from the DMA. People are able to easily switch away from operating system defaults through more easily accessible settings. Microsoft has (in the EU only) removed some of the deceptive tactics it uses to push Windows users to its own Edge browser. Third-party app stores are now available on iOS and Apple has been forced to boost interoperability for developers. Google allows third-party billing options, permits users to port their data to third-party services, and gives analytics and data to businesses using its platforms.

These wins have not been easy to obtain — often these companies (known as “gatekeepers” under the DMA) have sought to thwart, rather than comply with, the rules. At the same time as gatekeepers are trying to make the DMA fail, they are arguing that the DMA has not worked. And yet, this is far from true: despite poor compliance, people are benefiting from greater choice. Developers can now use a transparent and time-limited process to request interoperability with iOS features and functionality. Businesses are benefitting from greater access to data and users. The impact is only just starting to be felt.

This shows that competition regulation can succeed where enforcing traditional competition law often fails. Japan and the UK’s ex ante competition regulations are also being implemented. Which country will act next?

Why India Should Act Now

India’s digital economy is booming, but it risks being shaped almost exclusively by a few dominant platforms. Indian innovation risks remaining constrained by the walled gardens of tech giants — playing in the dark corners designated by a handful of powerful companies, instead of stretching out freely in the sun.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) admirably seeks to address such issues, but antitrust investigations and appeals take many years. Incumbents routinely use procedural delays to prolong enforcement battles.

By contrast, the ex-ante regulatory provisions in the draft Digital Competition Bill (DCB) released last year would proactively limit conduct such as default steering, bundling, and restricted interoperability — before harm becomes entrenched. Such measures would empower Indian startups, open-source builders, and developers to innovate on a more level playing field.

Had such rules existed ten years ago, perhaps Mozilla’s affordable smartphone might have taken hold in India, embedding digital access at scale and offering consumers richer choice. Instead, dominant platforms preserved their control, squeezing innovators out before they could reach users. The story looks set to be repeated for AI, as incumbents leverage their power to push their own services and confine startups and competitors to the margins once more. But it does not need to be this way.

Even as the Indian government now considers commissioning a market study before revisiting the Digital Competition Bill, proactive steps are needed to ensure that the study captures the barriers faced by startups, developers, and consumers, to accurately reflect the realities of India’s digital ecosystem.

India does not need to recreate or copy the DMA, or the UK and Japanese equivalents. However, it does need a digital competition regime that works for its people, its developers, and its institutions. By acting decisively now, India can chart a path where digital access is not gatekept — but unlocked — for all.

(Kush Amlani is Global Competition & Regulatory Counsel at Mozilla.)

Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.