Principles involved are Free Markets and Audit Assurance in dominantly IT driven businesses.
I came across this article today – “Mumbai Man Compares Online And Offline Order Bill, Price Differences Shocked Netizens” https://thelogicalindian.com/trending/rahul-kabra-compares-online-and-offline-food-order-bills-36416.
This raises two points.
There should never be a call for government to interfere in any private business venture – definitely not because of price difference between offline food ordering and online food ordering. Principle involved is free markets – it involves voluntary consensual mutually beneficial transactions. Both ordering options are available, besides comparing the price for same product across different platforms, and that should serve the purpose.
Secondly, another important point raised or rather speculated in this article is that of revenue fraud – where through software/algorithm manipulation, the platform companies could manipulate the prices without knowledge of the restaurant vendor or disclosure of pricing method to the consumer – this does violate the principle of free market – that one would have acted otherwise if this information of manipulation was known. It also involves legal definition of consent (“two or more persons are said to consent when they agree upon the same thing in the same sense”) under Section 13 of The Indian Contract Act.
For the second part, since these are dominantly IT systems driven businesses, a IT Systems audit by DISA/CISA+CA qualified professionals, focusing on revenue side, would rest the doubts. It would be in the interest of dominantly IT systems driven businesses to engage such qualified professionals and make it part of the scope of internal audit and statutory audit. That would assure people better than PR agency driven public statements/clarifications.