Over misleading advertisements, the Bike aggregator platform Rapido’s parent entity has been fined Rs 10 lakh by India’s consumer rights institution on Wednesday.
How Did This Happen?
It appears that the Central Consumer Protection Authority took up the case on a suo-moto basis against Roppen Transportation Services Pvt.
The company alleged for misleading advertisements on its official platforms, including YouTube and Facebook.
The company claimed of ‘Guaranteed Auto’ and ‘Auto in 5 min or get Rs 50’ which authority looked into and found, “The pattern of deceptive practices such as ‘Guaranteed Auto’ and ‘Auto in 5 min or get Rs 50’ falls within the definition of a ‘misleading advertisement’ under Section 2(28) and ‘unfair trade practice’ under Section 2 (47) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019,” CCPA said in its order.
According to this order, Rapido’s advertisements directly influenced consumers’ decision-making.
Further adding that Rapido adopted such unfair and deceptive practice for the purpose of promoting the sale of its service.
Moving ahead, regulator’s inquiry revealed that Rapido created a false impression of assured service, when in fact the Rs 50 benefit was paid as in-app tokens valid only for seven days, redeemable only against bike rides.
CCPA’s order noted, “This condition, undisclosed in the advertisement, not only diminishes the true worth of the promised “₹50” but also creates undue compulsion for repeat engagement under restrictive terms.”
Action Against Non Fulfillment Of Cashback Promise
The Bike aggregator platform has already ran this misleading advertisements for 548 days across over 120 cities and in multiple languages.
So this has increased the misleading influence of the ads, according to CCPA.
So far, 575 consumer complaints were registered on the National Consumer Helpline between April 2023 and May 2024 against Rapido said the authorities.
Besides this, another 1,224 set of complaints came in between June 2024 to July 2025, against the Aravind Sanka-led firm.
The order highlighted, “It is evident from the above figures that the number of consumer complaints against the opposite party has increased substantially over the subsequent period” and half of these grievances remained unaddressed by Rapido, as per the order.
Mostly, these complaints were about overcharging, while the next highest related to non-refunds.
Besides this, there are some complaints about driver misconduct and non-fulfilment of cashback promises also made it on the list.
According to CCPA, “The unresolved grievances pending in NCH clearly highlights the apathetic attitude towards the consumers.”
Moreover, the authority has noted that Rapido had engaged in “a practice calculated to mislead consumers by both commission and omission,” overstating service reliability while concealing key conditions, in its order.
Finally, the authority has directed Rapido to discontinue the misleading advertisements with immediate effect, and pay a penalty of Rs 10 lakh for publishing misleading advertisement and unfair trade practice in its order.
In addition to this, they have ordered Rapido to reimburse consumers who have not been paid Rs 50 through the advertised offer and has asked the firm to submit a compliance report of the directions within 15 days of receipt of the order.
