Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath Breaks Down Why Delhi HC’s Hindware Verdict Matters For All Businesses

In a ruling that could reshape how digital advertising and trademarked search terms are handled in India, the Delhi High Court held Google liable for trademark infringement in a case involving sanitaryware brand Hindware. The judgment found that Google’s advertising system allowed competitors to bid on “Hindware” as a keyword in search ads. The court observed that since “Hindware” is a protected trademark and not a generic term, enabling rival advertisers to purchase it could mislead users and divert traffic that would otherwise have naturally reached the brand.

According to the court’s reasoning, the core issue was that allowing competitors to buy the trademarked keyword effectively enables “diversion of traffic that should have legitimately

gone to Hindware,” reinforcing that search advertising systems are not neutral when they monetize brand terms.

The ruling has triggered wider debate in India’s digital business ecosystem, particularly among startups and consumer internet companies that rely heavily on search-driven discovery.

Nithin Kamath, co-founder of Zerodha, highlighted the broader implications of the judgment in a detailed post on X (formerly Twitter), calling it a “landmark judgment” and arguing that it addresses a long-standing imbalance in digital advertising.

He added that the case centered on the use of “Hindware” as a paid keyword by competitors. Explaining the mechanism in simple terms, he wrote, “By allowing competitors of Hindware to purchase the keyword ‘Hindware’ (a trademarked name) through Google Ads, Google enabled trademark infringement.”

Nithin Kamath emphasized that the court recognized the brand-specific nature of the term, stating that “Hindware is not a generic English word but a specific brand trademark.”

One of his key concerns is how this plays out in real-world user behavior.

“Whenever someone searches for ‘Zerodha’, the traffic should rightfully come to Zerodha. But what often happens is that the first couple of results on Google Search are ads, leading the customer to a competitor’s website,” he wrote.

He noted that this is not a marginal issue for his own business.

“This has been happening for well over a decade… we have lost a lot of business to this,” Nithin Kamath said, pointing to the cumulative impact of diverted traffic.

A major frustration, he added, is structural, “This is made worse by the fact that we do not advertise.” In his view, companies that choose not to run aggressive ad campaigns are disproportionately affected by keyword bidding systems.

Nithin Kamath also highlighted what he called an ironic incentive loop created by search advertising.

“A lot of brands, just to capture the traffic that should have come to them organically, end up bidding on their own keywords,” he wrote, adding, “Think about it… you still have to pay Google just to hopefully make your name too expensive for your competition to run ads on it.”

He suggested the ruling could change how companies respond to such practices going forward, “Now, thanks to the Delhi High Court judgment, we have the option of taking legal action whenever we come across instances of other companies squatting on our keyword.”

Beyond individual businesses, Nithin Kamath argued that the decision could improve fairness across the ecosystem.

“The other brilliant part about this judgment is that it levels the playing field,” he said, adding that startups are often the most vulnerable to this kind of competitive ad pressure.

“This matters even more for startups, who are already starved for resources and have the odds stacked against them,” he wrote, explaining, “The last thing they need is for competitors to bid on their brand keywords and steal their traffic.”

He also pointed to an even more aggressive version of the same issue in mobile ecosystems, “While keyword squatting is most visible in Google web results, it is an even bigger problem when it comes to app stores.”

In Nithin Kamath’s view, app store ads intensify the effect because “when a user clicks on an app-store ad, they often end up installing an app,” making the conversion more direct and harder to reverse compared to a web search click.