India’s online shoppers may be losing up to ₹28,000 crore a year to dark patterns – hidden fees, fake countdown timers, pre-selected add-ons, auto-renewing subscriptions, and other design choices that push users toward decisions they may not have intended to make. A new study by consumer insights firm Datum Intelligence examined 12 major platforms across e-commerce, quick commerce and online travel booking, including Nykaa, Amazon, Flipkart, Blinkit, BigBasket and ClearTrip. It estimates that more than 304 million Indian online shoppers are affected, losing ₹78–87 per month on average. The finding that stands out most: 81% of users can identify a dark pattern when shown one. Yet 85% still fall for them. Researchers argue that awareness alone is not enough when platforms are designed to create urgency, reduce friction, and steer behaviour during the checkout process. India introduced dark-pattern guidelines in 2023 under the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), identifying 13 such practices as unfair trade. But enforcement remains uneven. Zepto was fined after submitting a compliance declaration, and the report notes that 26 platforms which filed compliance declarations were later found non-compliant in independent surveys. That points to a larger challenge: regulators and platforms may not even be interpreting the same rules in the same way. Among the platforms studied, Nykaa ranked worst overall on Datum’s benchmark index, while BigBasket ranked worst among quick-commerce platforms and ClearTrip among the worst-performing travel-booking apps. Researchers found a 92-point gap between the best and worst performers. The report also estimates that ₹55,000 crore in platform GMV is now at risk as users spend less, switch services, or leave platforms altogether.
Source: Datum Intelligence
