CCI has rejected allegations of price fixing against Ola & Uber, stating that drivers acceding to algorithmically determined prices by platforms do not amount to collusion between them.

It was alleged that due to such pricing, riders were not able to negotiate fares with drivers and also that cab aggregators were in ‘hub & spoke arrangement’, by which they exchanged sensitive information to facilitate cartelization.

CCI held:

• Such pricing for each rider and trip is different due to interplay of large data sets and thereby not similar to hub and spoke arrangement.
• Such arrangement requires spokes to use a third party platform (hub) for exchanging sensitive information which can facilitate price fixing. For a cartel to operate there needs to be a conspiracy to fix prices, which also requires existence of collusion.
• There is no such agreement u/s 3 between drivers inter-se to delegate this pricing power to platform/ cab aggregators.

For more: https://www.cci.gov.in/sites/default/files/37of2018.pdf