is such that the drivers stay locked in a particular network to fulfil the minimum guarantee and are not available to provide services on any other competing platform. This, in the Commission’s opinion, is a narrow reading of the term ‘agreement’ defined under Section 2(b) of the Act. Existence of an agreement/understanding/arrangement between parties is a pre-requisite to attract the provisions of Section 3. The agreement referred to by the Informant in this case consists of incentives offered by the OPs which have been availed by the drivers out of their choice. While dealing with the matter in Case Nos. 6 & 74 of 2015, the Commission observed that, in radio taxi service market, both drivers and riders can have applications developed by multiple service providers and can ‘multi-home’. The drivers/fleet owners connected to various aggregators through apps, can easily switch between different aggregators depending on the incentive scheme etc. by simply switching off or switching on their mobile handsets. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that there are supply constraints in the market for drivers such that these alleged agreements can cause lock-ins and, hence, barriers to entry in the radio taxi services market. Thus, the incentives given by OPs to their prospective drivers cannot be held to be anti-competitive agreement as such. This, in the Commission’s view, does not fall under the definition of agreement as understood within the meaning of Section 3 read with Section 2(b) of the Act. The allegation, thus, does not hold any merit.
