Stay connected with KayaToday, follow us on Instagram and Facebook for the latest news and reviews delivered straight to you.
Printer ink has long been one of the most quietly exploitative businesses in consumer technology. HP has built a substantial portion of its printing revenue not on hardware margins but on locking customers into expensive proprietary consumables. Now, a ruling from India’s Competition Commission has exposed what happens when that model collides with a competitive reseller market: collusion, bid manipulation, and WhatsApp message trails that regulators found difficult to ignore.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) announced this week that it has fined HP India and its channel partners a combined 1.4 billion rupees, approximately $14.4 million, for coordinating bid prices on government procurement contracts covering computers, ink cartridges, toner, and other printing supplies. HP India itself was fined 1.3 billion rupees (around $13.1 million), with an additional 119.8 million rupees (about $1.2 million) levied specifically for cartelization in the sale of toner, cartridges, and related consumables. Twenty-one HP resellers were separately fined 35.2 million rupees, equivalent to roughly $365,000.
How the collusion actually worked
The CCI’s order describes a layered scheme in which resellers approached HP India seeking help to tilt government tenders in their favour. According to the regulator, the requests included restricting resellers from other territories from participating in local tenders, dividing government accounts and relevant tenders among a preferred group, limiting the number of manufacturer’s authorization forms issued to competing resellers, and arranging what the order calls “cover bids,” meaning deliberately inflated competing bids designed to make a chosen partner’s price look competitive without actually competing.
A separate CCI order focused on WhatsApp records showing HP India and 16 of its Tier-2 reseller partners operating in what the regulator described as “a collusive arrangement.” The messages, covering the period from 2017 to 2020, documented bid rigging, price fixation, and customer allocation. The CCI characterized HP India as playing a central role in the arrangement, a description HP India pushed back on, stating in its submission that it “humbly objects to HP India’s role being characterized as a ‘kingpin’ of the entire collusive arrangement.”
HP India’s own explanation for its involvement is revealing. The company argued that high printing supply prices had pushed some resellers to threaten switching to lower-cost counterfeit products to stay price-competitive, and that HP India was “commercially forced into a position where it had to support the collusive arrangement.” In other words, the company’s defence is essentially that its own pricing structure created the conditions for the cartel it then helped facilitate.
The deeper problem the fine only partially addresses
The $14.4 million total fine is not a number that will significantly alter HP’s financial trajectory. What the case does illuminate, however, is the structural tension at the core of HP’s printing business. HP has for years used firmware updates to block third-party ink cartridges in printers that customers already own, a practice that has drawn regulatory scrutiny and consumer complaints across multiple markets. The logic is straightforward from HP’s perspective: printers are sold at thin margins or even at a loss, with the expectation that recurring ink and toner sales will generate long-term revenue.
The India case shows that this model creates pressure not just on end consumers but on HP’s own distribution partners. When official HP-branded supplies are priced high enough that resellers consider defecting to counterfeit alternatives, the entire channel faces a coordination problem. The CCI’s findings suggest that rather than addressing the underlying pricing tension, HP India and its partners resolved it through anticompetitive coordination instead.
The CCI has ordered HP India and its channel partners to cease all anti-competitive conduct and to conduct competition compliance training programs within 60 days. HP has not publicly commented on the fines or the orders.
Why this matters beyond India
For businesses and procurement officers in Malaysia and Singapore, the case is a useful reminder of the risks embedded in vendor-controlled supply chains, particularly in printing infrastructure. Government procurement in both countries relies heavily on competitive tendering, and the mechanisms described in the CCI order, cover bids, territory restrictions, and coordinated pricing, are not unique to any single market. The Inland Revenue Board, public universities, and government-linked companies across the region regularly procure printing hardware and consumables through similar tender processes.
More broadly, the case adds to a growing body of regulatory action against HP’s printing practices globally. The European Consumer Organisation has previously challenged HP’s ink subscription and cartridge-blocking policies, and the United States Federal Trade Commission has scrutinized the company’s firmware update practices. India’s action is notable because it targets not just HP’s consumer-facing behaviour but the mechanics of how the company manages its reseller network in a major emerging market.
The fine alone will not change HP’s calculus on printer ink pricing. But the documentary evidence of reseller collusion, preserved in WhatsApp messages and now cited in a formal regulatory order, creates a public record that other competition authorities can reference. For a company whose printing division depends on controlling consumable supply chains, that precedent may ultimately prove more consequential than the rupee amount attached to it.
Read More: Trump Media Is Selling Wall Street a Direct Line to Trump’s Posts Before Anyone Else Sees Them
