The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has slapped slumbies such as IndiGo, Zepto, FirstCry and Physics Wallah, among nine digital platforms, for their unfair and deceptive practices in their online platforms popular for “dark patterns”, the Centre told the Rajya Sabha.
A dark pattern is a website feature, or interface, that tricks consumers into making a decision that they had not considered. The government has come up with a new guideline in Prevention, Regulation of Dark Patterns 2023, in which it has listed down 13 dark patterns in total, such as False urgency, Drip pricing, Subscription traps, Confirm shaming, Trick questions, and many more.
The Consumer Affairs Department said the CCPA had urged e-commerce platforms to carry out self-audits in June 2025 to find and eliminate such practices. The fines collected by the regulator from the violators are worth Rs 20 lakh since then.
The major actions include the Zepto Marketplace, which was slapped ₹7 lakh fine by CCPA for its fraudulent methods of slashing product prices and then adding on handling charges and auto-enrolling buyers into its membership platform. These were recorded as drip pricing and basket sneaking, respectively, by the regulator. Since then, Zepto has eliminated the practices.
Physics Wallah was fined Rs 5 lakh after the watchdog came to a conclusion that they did not allow the public to donate money to charity upon their own choice, but instead automatically gave it to their charitable organisation, along with “deliberately emotionally provocative” messages. The platform also asked for users’ personal data to get free courses. The company has paid the penalty and discontinued the practices.
The CCPA was also asking IndiGo to amend its app to remove the “No, I will not add to the trip” option from its confirm shaming positioning, instead of having an opt-out statement as shown below.