Payal Malik is a Senior Advisor at Econ One.  She is an economist specializing in competition law/antitrust, regulation, and public policy.   Most recently she was Economic Advisor and Head of the Economics Division at the Competition Commission of India (“Commission”), a position she held for ten years between 2012-2023. In these roles, she has advised the Commission on the economics of competition law across an expansive range of markets; interfaced with sector regulators, government, industry, legal and the international competition community; led case teams on competition assessment of M&As and antitrust enforcement matters; and advised the Commission on judicial review of cases before the appellate tribunal and the Supreme Court of India.

Ms. Malik has considerable experience in the economics of digital and ecommerce markets.  Notably, she was the Convener of the Working Group on New Age Economy and Bigdata constituted by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India (GoI), for the competition law review committee (CLRC). She was also nominated as a member of the task force of the GoI formulating the ecommerce policy of India and member of a sub-group of the Committee on Digital Competition law (CDCL), devising an ex-ante regulatory mechanism for digital markets through a separate legislation.

Additionally, Ms. Malik has led several Market Studies of the Commission including in the e-commerce, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, institutional investment, and entertainment sectors.  She has interfaced with pharmaceutical, telecom, and coal ministries of the GoI to develop competition compliant policies and legislations guided by the Commission’s Market Studies.

Formerly, she has been a visiting Senior Research Fellow LIRNEasia and Senior Consultant, NCAER, Delhi. Her professional collaborations have been with OECD, Orbicom, IDEI, University of Toulouse, Technical University, Delft, Netherlands, University of Québec at Montreal, CEPR, JRC, European Commission, IPTS Seville, ICEGEC, Hungary, Department of Information Technology, TRAI, Ministry of Power, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Planning Commission of India, CSO, India, WSP-SA, World Bank and AFD, Paris. She has several years of research and economic consulting experience in network Industries such as power and telecommunication, ICTs, Innovation systems, and Infrastructure. She was on the team that drafted the Electricity Act of India ushering competition into the sector.

She has published in peer-reviewed international and Indian journals in the area of competition law and policy.  She is a regular columnist and writes op-eds in the field of regulation and competition for reputed business and daily newspapers. Currently, she is a Visiting Professor at the Digital Economy, Startup and Innovation Centre , ICRIER, a Delhi based policy think tank.