67 advertisements has come under the Advertising Standards Council of India’s (ASCI) scanner after Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) upheld complaints brought to it in April 2016. 27 of these advertisements belong in Healthcare, 10 in Food & Beverages , 7 in E-commerce, 4 in Automotives, 4 other ads in Education category and 15 advertisements from other categories.
Some of the names in e-commerce that came under the scanner were as follows. According to ASCI, MobiKwik’s online advertisement, which claimed to provide Rs 20 and Rs 500 as “Cashback Offer” for transactions made through its platform, was misleading by ambiguity, according to ASCI. However, the ad failed to place a disclaimer that the cashback is offered in the MobiKwik wallet and not to the bank account. Uber India’s online advertisement regarding trip fares was found to be misleading by ASCI. Paytm’s claim that its services are available “24X7” was misleading according to ASCI, as the ad did not mention the details of specific services for which the claim was valid. Hostgator.in’s online advertisement that claimed to provide “Unlimited Storage and bandwidth” for its cloud hosting services was found to be misleading by exaggeration, according to ASCI. Bankbazaar.com’s ad for its Bhartiya Jan Dhan Credit Scehme was found to be misleading consumers by ASCI since the scheme was designed to look like a Government-owned scheme. Amazon Inc’s video advertisement that depicted “a pillion rider on a bike without a helmet” is a violation of traffic rules, and was struck down by the ASCI.
Apart from the above there were several big names from different industries such as food and beverages, telecom, education and automatives that have come under ASCI’s scanner with companies such as Colgate, Patanjali, Apollo tyres and several others being accused of misleading customers.
