- BRICS competition authorities met in Udaipur to discuss fair competition, digital markets and cooperation among member countries.
- India highlighted the need for stronger cross-border regulatory cooperation as digital platforms and technologies increasingly operate across national boundaries.
- The dialogue could help strengthen India’s competition framework and enforcement capacity, particularly in the fast-growing digital economy.
The issue when heads of BRICS competition agencies met in Udaipur this month was not one of diplomacy but rather one of the more prosaic but important kind: Who controls markets that no longer observe boundaries? With platforms, algorithms, and global agreements having taken up residence in determining how consumers receive products and services, the question of regulatory jurisdiction and cooperation between regulators becomes central to competition policy. The fact that it was the Indian Competition Commission hosting such a meeting provides an excellent starting point to the larger story behind all of this.
What happened at the BRICS meeting
The Competition Commission of India organized the BRICS competition authorities’ meeting of heads of agencies in Udaipur, Rajasthan, during India’s Chairship of BRICS in 2026. The representatives discussed recent trends regarding competition laws and policies in their respective jurisdictions, along with their enforcement measures and domestic market issues, as per the official news release. The meeting passed a joint communiqué named “Strengthening Cooperation to Promote Fair Competition, including in Renewable Energy Markets.” During India’s chairmanship, the CCI also led a joint study called “Emerging Competition Landscape in the Renewable Energy Sector in BRICS,” whose findings were deliberated upon in the meeting. In her address, the chairperson of CCI, Ravneet Kaur, highlighted the increasing international nature of digital markets and new technologies and stressed that cooperation and knowledge exchange among BRICS authorities would be necessary for future-ready enforcement. The next BRICS International Competition Conference will be held in Brazil in 2027.
Why competition cooperation matters
Jurisdictional boundaries are rarely observed in modern markets. An application store in one country could be in charge of app distribution in a whole bunch of other countries while an advertising network or a cloud service could control its advertising or cloud services in the same manner, and a certain pricing algorithm or data sharing practice could provoke competition problems in several economies simultaneously. The OECD claims that globalisation and the development of the digital economy made cross-border competition problems much more diverse – starting from cross-border mergers and ending with anticompetitive practices of digital platforms – so cooperation of jurisdictions becomes essential in the field. A review of the OECD conducted in 2022 regarding international cooperation in the sphere of competition proceedings showed that regulators of different countries were conducting parallel investigations regarding some big digital corporations, thus proving that certain practices could provoke investigation in several countries simultaneously. For developing countries, a coordinated approach – joint studies, joint declarations and information exchange – becomes an efficient method of improving the enforcement capacity of regulators.
India’s competition-policy challenge
Even the regulatory framework of India itself has evolved in response to this development. The Competition (Amendment) Act, 2023 has made provision for a “deal value threshold,” according to which the transaction that goes beyond a certain value level – as announced by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to be INR 2,000 crore – requires approval by the CCI, in cases where the target company has significant business presence in India, despite the failure to meet traditional criteria of asset and/or turnover. This was done to incorporate into the scope of the CCI’s mandate deals involving companies that have low asset levels but high strategic value, such as digital and technological companies. Given the fact that India boasts one of the biggest and fastest-digitising consumer markets in the world, it becomes important for the country to evolve its competition framework accordingly.
The takeaway
This Udaipur summit alone will not solve all the jurisdictional issues arising from digital and international markets. However, it provides an opportunity for the competition authorities in developing economies to share their experiences and collaborate in research and also develop a rapport that could enable them to cooperate at some later stage when dealing with specific cases. This building block approach is more important than any declaration for the Indian economy and its BRICS partners.
Clear Cut Research Desk
New Delhi, UPDATED: August 11, 2026 13:00 IST
Written By: Dr. Jyoti Aggarwal
Designation: Senior Research Associate at Devinsights
