HP India Hit With £14 Million Fine for Bid-Rigging Printer Supplies and PCs
The Competition Commission of India has fined HP India and a collection of its reseller partners a combined 1.4 billion rupees — roughly $14.4 million — for colluding to fix prices on government contracts covering computers, ink cartridges, toner, and other printing consumables.
The CCI found that HP India worked alongside five resellers to coordinate bid prices on government procurement contracts, essentially stage-managing which HP partner would win each tender. That earned HP India the lion's share of the penalty: 1.3 billion rupees. The remaining fines were split between the resellers involved.
The regulator's order is fairly damning in its specifics. Resellers allegedly asked HP India to restrict competitors from other territories participating in local tenders, carve up government accounts among themselves, limit how many manufacturer's authorisation forms were issued to outside resellers, and arrange 'cover bids' — the practice of submitting deliberately losing bids to create the appearance of genuine competition. HP India, according to the order, played a central coordinating role throughout.
A separate CCI order added further detail, citing WhatsApp records showing HP India and 16 Tier-2 resellers operating in a coordinated arrangement involving bid rigging, price fixing, and customer allocation between 2017 and 2020. HP India was described by the regulator as the 'kingpin' of the arrangement, a characterisation the company pushed back on. HP's position, apparently, is that resellers threatened to start stocking counterfeit ink and toner if HP didn't help them stay competitive, leaving the company commercially pressured into playing along.
That defence is notable mostly for what it inadvertently confirms: that HP's own channel partners find its printer supply pricing so punishing they were openly threatening to defect to cheaper alternatives. This is the same company that routinely pushes firmware updates to lock third-party ink out of printers customers already own. When even your own resellers are threatening to walk over the price of a cartridge, something has gone wrong.
The CCI also fined 21 HP resellers a further 35.2 million rupees collectively, and ordered all parties to stop the anti-competitive behaviour and complete competition compliance training within 60 days.
HP has not issued any public statement on the fines.