Beco co-founder Aditya Ruia has said the debate around ingredient transparency in household cleaning products will outlast the company’s legal setback, after the Delhi High Court ordered Beco to take down its comparative campaign against Hindustan Unilever’s Surf Excel and Vim.
The dispute traces back to Beco’s #WarOnWhatsHidden campaign, which directly compared its products against HUL’s Surf Excel Matic Liquid and Vim Dishwash Gel, flagging ingredients like Benzisothiazolinone (BIT) and Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate (LAS) that Beco linked to skin and eye irritation. HUL approached the Delhi High Court seeking an injunction, arguing the ads overstepped the limits of permissible comparative advertising.
At the interim stage, Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani’s bench held that the campaign, taken as a whole, crossed those limits, and directed its removal. Ruia confirmed Beco would comply in full, but was quick to draw a boundary around the ruling’s scope, noting it applies specifically to this campaign and doesn’t shut the door on future comparative advertising by Beco within the court’s guardrails.
In a LinkedIn post following the order, Ruia argued the campaign had already achieved its larger objective by turning ingredient disclosure into an industry-wide conversation rather than a one-off marketing stunt, framing the underlying question – what actually goes into everyday household products – as bigger than any single legal outcome.
He also defended comparative advertising as a legitimate competitive tool when used within legal limits, positioning ingredient transparency not as a campaign angle but as a standard the entire category should eventually be held to.
