After nearly five years of suspense, India finally has a verdict on Whatsapp’s data-sharing practices. And it’s not quite what the country’s antitrust regulator hoped for.

In early November, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal—a body that hears appeals against the orders of, among others, the Competition Commission of India (CCI)—dismissed the ban on the messaging platform sharing user data with its parent Meta. The accompanying snub to CCI, which had introduced the ban, was that it had exceeded its powers and overstepped its jurisdiction. The upholding of its Rs 200 crore fine on Whatsapp was, at best, a small consolation.

And that’s the story of the CCI right now. India’s digital markets are turning into a dense, algorithmic jungle of data, platforms, and network effects. And the antitrust watchdog is somewhere in there, barking at the trees.

The numbers don’t lie. Investigations opened by the body have halved to seven in 2024, from 13 the year before. This is the lowest they’ve ever been. The time it takes to bring cases to a close, meanwhile, has more than doubled to six to eight months, from just three months earlier, a competition lawyer told The Ken.

Though the CCI claims it has resolved 90% of the cases it’s taken up to date, it’s a classic case of selection bias, said another competition lawyer who works closely with CCI. After all, if the commission took up just seven of the 35 complaints it received in 2024—dismissing 80% of total complaints—that’s hardly a glittering track record.

Jurisdictional limits are another point of contention. Nearly half of CCI’s orders end up being challenged at the appellate tribunal, and stew there for years. Umar Javed vs. Google has been ongoing for seven years. Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India vs. Makemytrip has been ongoing for six years. Meanwhile, in Europe, most competition cases wrap up in 18 months.

Similarly, the Whatsapp case was taken up by CCI in 2021, when the messaging platform’s privacy policy made it mandatory for users to share their data with other Meta platforms. CCI dubbed this “anti-competitive”; Whatsapp called it a “misunderstanding”, going on to say that CCI was unequipped to understand the technical underpinnings.

The implication was clear: the competition regulator’s plodding pace was no match for the digital economy’s incessant strides.

The number of cases CCI picks up each year is minuscule—and has been dropping over the years.