The ED press release can be accessed here.
The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) has asked quick commerce platform Zepto to join its money laundering investigation into Parimatch, the Cyprus-based offshore betting platform that India banned in 2023, over advertisements that ran on Zepto’s app and reached customers through its delivery network, The Economic Times reported. MediaNama flagged this exact advertisement in March 2025.
Why this matters: India’s betting ad rules name broadcasters, news publishers, and “online advertisement intermediaries,” language the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) drafted before grocery apps started selling ad space and inserting flyers into delivery bags. A TV channel that airs a banned betting ad knows it has broken a rule. Zepto sells the same exposure across its app and its delivery bags, yet says an outside ad agency placed the Parimatch ad, not the company itself.
The ED’s questions test that defence. If a platform can avoid responsibility by saying an outside agency booked the ad, every app can route betting promotions through a vendor and walk away clean. If it cannot, quick commerce platforms carry the same duty to vet advertisers that broadcasters and publishers already do. Under the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 (PROGA), the exposure is sharper still: the law criminalises betting-ad promotion, so the question is no longer just whether Zepto loses safe harbour, but whether it faces criminal liability.
What the ED found:
- Parimatch advertisements ran on Zepto’s app.
- Flyers promoting the platform reached customers alongside grocery deliveries.
- The agency asked Zepto whether it verified the advertiser’s credentials before running the campaign.
- Zepto received an email, not a summons, and no executive faced questioning.
What Zepto told Entrackr: Responding to Entrackr, Zepto said it fully cooperated with the ED and shared all information available to the company. It traced the matter to an advertisement placed in March 2025 through a third-party media and vendor arrangement for a merchandise entity. The company said it:
- Did not onboard, contract with, or manage the advertiser.
- Had no role in any betting, gaming, payments, or user-acquisition activities linked to the entity.
- Ran the campaign through an external arrangement and connected investigating officials with the vendor.
“Zepto did not directly onboard, contract with, or manage the advertiser in question, and had no involvement in any betting, gaming, payments, user acquisition, or operational activity linked to the entity under investigation,” a company spokesperson told Entrackr.
What MediaNama reported in 2025: MediaNama reported in March 2025 that Zepto displayed Parimatch advertisements during the Indian Premier League (IPL) season. The ad appeared as a product priced at Rs 0, giving users no reason to remove it from their carts. As a result, it remained on-screen indefinitely and built brand recall for the banned platform. That timing matches the advertisement Zepto now attributes to a third-party vendor. The Zepto ad followed 1xBet advertising on Uber cabs in Delhi and Mumbai, another Cyprus-based betting platform surfacing on an Indian platform during the IPL.
Zepto is not the only platform: Sources told ET that the ED had approached other quick commerce platforms as well. The agency is reviewing how digital platforms verify advertisers across the board.
The wider Parimatch case: The ED searched 17 locations across six states on May 26 and has frozen Rs 112 crore in the case overall, including Rs 1.2 crore in cash seized during the latest raids. The agency alleges Parimatch duped users and generated more than Rs 3,000 crore in a year, routing the money through mule accounts, front companies, Banking Correspondent networks, and hawala channels. It launched the probe on a First Information Report (FIR) filed by the Cyber Police Station, Mumbai.
The surrogate advertising angle: In its press release, the ED said Parimatch promoted itself under the cover names “Parimatch Sports” and “Parimatch News,” sponsored teams across more than 15 states in cricket, hockey, and football, and ran promotions through quick commerce apps and grocery-delivery flyers. The release did not name any platform.
What the rules say: The MIB has repeatedly barred direct and surrogate betting advertisements, through advisories in June 2022, October 2022, April 2023, and March 2024, along with a May 2023 letter asking states to curb outdoor betting ads. The advisories hold that betting advertisements violate the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, the Press Council Act, 1978, and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
The March 2024 advisory also warned that intermediaries lose safe harbour under Section 79 of the IT Act if they fail to remove unlawful content expeditiously. That provision will help determine how much responsibility Zepto bears for the ad it carried.
PROGA goes further than the advisories. Section 9 criminalises the advertising of banned real-money games, prescribing imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of up to Rs 50 lakh, and explicitly naming digital advertising platforms. Whether PROGA’s prohibition extends to an offshore betting platform like Parimatch, as opposed to the older gambling framework, remains a live legal question.
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