Startups face regulatory heat as ED probes deepen in 2025

India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) has intensified its scrutiny of startups in 2025, launching a series of investigations across various sectors, including gaming, fintech, and e-commerce. What started as a few separate investigations has now turned into a larger crackdown, putting a spotlight on how some of India’s top-funded startups follow rules around foreign investment, business structure, and overall compliance.

One of the most high-profile targets this year has been opinion trading platform Probo, which came under the ED scanner in July. The agency conducted searches across multiple locations and seized assets worth Rs 284.5 crore, alleging that Probo’s model, where users trade on real-world outcomes, amounts to illegal betting and violates the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). 

While the company has denied any wrongdoing and assured full cooperation with the authorities,  on July 15, the Punjab & Haryana High Court heard Probo’s plea to quash the FIR and unfreeze its bank accounts. Though the court declined interim relief, it asked the state to respond regarding partial unfreezing. The matter is now listed for the next hearing on August 26. After the ED intervention, the case has become part of a broader debate over how such platforms are classified and regulated in India’s evolving legal landscape.

Around the same time, Myntra, the fashion platform owned by Flipkart, became the subject of a fresh FEMA complaint filed by the ED. The case revolves around alleged misuse of FDI norms to the tune of Rs 1,654 crore. According to the ED, Myntra operated under the wholesale cash-and-carry model, which is eligible for 100% FDI through the automatic route, but was effectively engaged in multi-brand retail by routing goods through a group entity, Vector E-Commerce. According to this structure, ED claims that it has violated caps on intra-group sales and circumvented retail FDI restrictions. The complaint has been placed before the adjudicating authority in Bengaluru.

Another startup in the ED’s crosshairs is Simpl, a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) platform operated by One Sigma Technologies. The agency has alleged FDI violations worth Rs 913 crore, stating that the company misclassified its operations as IT services to raise foreign capital under the automatic route—when in fact, its activities fall under regulated financial services, which require prior government approval. The case underscores a growing pattern where fintech startups offering credit-linked services are being questioned over regulatory arbitrage in FDI filings.

In parallel, Paytm and its subsidiaries have come under the ED’s radar for alleged violations of foreign exchange rules. In April 2025, the agency issued a show-cause notice to One97 Communications, Little Internet, and Nearbuy India, citing FEMA breaches worth Rs 611 crore. The matter relates to overseas investments made between 2015 and 2019, which were made before Paytm acquired the entities, without following the RBI’s reporting and pricing norms. While Paytm has maintained that the issue predates its ownership and has no impact on current operations, the case adds to the growing list of startups grappling with retrospective scrutiny over FDI compliance.

The scrutiny hasn’t been limited to the domestic startup ecosystem. Global forex trading platform OctaFX is under ED investigation for allegedly laundering nearly Rs 800 crore through unauthorized forex trading in India. The agency claims the firm used fake KYCs, mule accounts, and shell companies to route funds overseas. Assets worth over Rs 292 crore, including a yacht and Spanish real estate, have been attached, with the case ongoing under the PMLA.

The ED’s widening crackdown signals a shift from legacy probes to deeper scrutiny of digital-first businesses. For founders and investors, compliance is no longer optional; it’s a live operational risk. The sheer breadth of probes also indicates just how badly tangled with red tape regulations remain in India, pushing everyone to break the rules in one way or another at times. The sheer number of hoops that firms have to jump through, and consequently, the huge amount of time they can save by taking what are sometimes advised as ‘safe shortcuts’, frequently leads to missteps. We have no doubt that, going by the letter of the law, perhaps even ED (which has a terrible conviction record, going more for settlements) will find some overstepping, besides the obvious criminality in some cases. But the larger issue remains the mess that are regulations, and the failure of regulators to address these issues. Regulation in India has been interpreted almost exclusively as a role whose job is to ‘protect’ the end consumer, something where it is easier to pass off tokenism as action. We believe regulators who take a more holistic view, including making life genuinely easier for the firms they are supposed to regulate, will achieve a lot more eventually for the whole ecosystem.