The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has closed a case alleging anti-competitive practices against Godrej & Boyce Mfg and 15 other entities, finding no evidence to support the claims. The agency dismissed the allegations after a detailed review of the informants’ submissions.
Two Gurugram-based advocates, Aditya Tripathi and Arun Gaur, submitted to the CCI that Godrej and the 15 defendants systematically manipulated the public procurement process for institutional furniture. They argued this practice foreclosed competition and denied market access to rival companies.
The informants claimed that product specifications in the tenders were exact replicas of Godrej’s proprietary products, including technical details, line drawings, and photographs. They relied on legal precedents, such as Excel Corp Care Ltd v CCI (2017), to argue that the bidding process was manipulated from the start.
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According to the informants, Godrej’s winning rates were significantly higher than its competitors. Godrej secured around 43.7% of the tenders it participated in, or 88 contracts out of 201. In contrast, competitor Methodex Systems had the closest winning rate at 3.13%, securing just one tender out of 32.
The data also showed that in 2023, Godrej captured 98.9% of the total award value for institutional furniture. The informants noted that Godrej did not win 71 tenders valued at INR1.3 billion (USD14.4 million), yet the bid volume exceeded the total participation value of Godrej’s rivals. They argued this “winning gap” could not be explained by simple competitive efficiency.
Godrej had denied market access to rivals since they could not produce the proprietary products specified in the tenders, the informants said. They also criticized the requirement to provide matching imagery as an unfair condition. Relying on Coal India Limited and Anr v CCI and Anr (2023), they reiterated that conditions in a public tender could not be unfair and one-sided.
In its analysis, the CCI determined that Godrej was not a dominant competitor for the supply of institutional furniture in India, holding only a 15% market share. The authority noted that the informants’ main grievance appeared to be the design of the tenders and procurement methodology rather than the bidding process itself.
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The CCI stated that Godrej’s mere participation in a tender process, without evidence of its involvement in the design, did not establish bid rigging. Preparing a tender with technical specifications, eligibility conditions, and procurement requirements falls under the domain of the procuring entities, the commission said.
Even if certain specifications matched Godrej’s products, this could not be understood as collusion or an anti-competitive practice. Several procuring entities had obtained institutional furniture through provisions in the General Financial Rules, 2017, relating to proprietary article certificates, the CCI added. No material indicated that procurement decisions resulted from Godrej’s alleged anti-competitive practices.
The commission highlighted specific flaws in the informants’ arguments. Their winning gap analysis lacked corroborative evidence and was insufficient to establish a contravention of competition laws. Inconsistencies existed in the data where Godrej’s competitors with significant win rates were simply not mentioned.
