Google, which reaches more internet users than any other firm in India and commands 99% of the nation’s smartphone market, has stumbled upon an odd challenge in the world’s second largest internet market: Scores of top local entrepreneurs.
Dozens of top startups and firms in India are working to form an alliance and toying with the idea of launching an app store to cut their reliance on Google, five people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
The list of entrepreneurs include high-profile names such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma, co-founder and chief executive of Paytm (India’s most valuable startup), Deep Kalra of travel ticketing firm MakeMyTrip, and executives from PolicyBazaar, Sharechat and many other firms.
The growing list of founders expressed deep concerns about Google’s “monopolistic” hold on India, and discussed what they alleged was unfair and inconsistent enforcement of Play Store’s guidelines in the country.
The conversations, which began in recent weeks, escalated on Tuesday after Google said that starting next year developers with an app on Google Play Store must give the company a cut of as much as 30% of several app-related payments.
Dozens of executives “from nearly every top startup and firm” in India attended a call on Tuesday to discuss the way forward, some of the people said, requesting anonymity. A 30% cut to Google is simply unfeasible, people on the call unanimously agreed.
Vishal Gondal, the founder of fitness startup GOQii, confirmed the talks to TechCrunch and said that an alternative app store would immensely help the Indian app ecosystem.
TechCrunch reached out to Paytm on Monday for comment and the startup declined the request.
In recent months, several major startups in India have also expressed disappointment over several of the existing industry bodies, which some say have failed to work on nurturing the local ecosystem.
The tension between some firms and Google became more public than ever late last month after the Android-maker reiterated Play Store’s gambling policy, sending a shockwave to scores of startups in the country that were hoping to cash in on the ongoing season of Indian Premier League cricket tournament.
Google temporarily pulled Paytm’s marquee app from the Play Store citing repeat violation of its Play Store policies. Disappointed by Google’s move, Paytm’s Sharma said in a TV interview, “This is the problem of India’s app ecosystem. So many founders have reached out to us… if we believe this country can build digital business, we must know that it is at somebody else’s hand to bless that business and not this country’s rules and regulations.”
Google has sent notices to several firms in India including Hotstar, TechCrunch reported last month. Indian newspaper Economic Times reported on Wednesday that the Mountain View giant had also sent warnings to food delivery startups Swiggy and Zomato.
Vivek Wadhwa, a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program, lauded the banding of Indian entrepreneurs and likened Silicon Valley giants’ hold on India to the rising days of East India Company, which pillaged India. “Modern day tech companies pose a similar risk,” he told TechCrunch.
Some of the participating members are also hopeful that the government, which has urged the citizens in India to become self-reliant to revive the declining economy, would help their movement.
India’s richest man Ambani, who runs oil-to-retails giant Reliance Industries, is an ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Jio Platforms has attracted over $20 billion in investment from Google, Facebook, and 11 other high-profile investors this year.
The voluminous investment in Jio Platforms has puzzled many industry executives. “I see no business case for Facebook investing in Jio beyond saying we need regulatory help,” said Miten Sampat, a high-profile angel-investor on a podcast published Wednesday.
“This is a white-collar way of saying there is corruption involved, and if the government gets upset, I have invested somewhere with some friend of the government. All of us are losing at the benefit of one company,” he said. Sampat’s views are shared by many industry executives, though nobody has said it on record and in such clear terms.
Google said in July that it would work with Jio Platforms on low-cost Android smartphones. Jio Platforms is planning to launch as many as 200 million smartphones in the next three years, according to a pitch the telecom giant has made to several developers. Bloomberg first reported about Jio Platform’s smartphone production plans.
These smartphones, as is the case with nearly 40 million JioPhone feature phones in circulation today, will have an app store with only a few dozen apps, all vetted and approved by Jio, according to one developer who was pitched by Jio Platforms. An industry executive described Jio’s store as a walled-garden.
A possible viable option for startup founders is Indus OS, a Samsung-backed third-party store, which last month said it reaches over 100 million monthly active users. As of earlier this week, Paytm and other firms had not reached out to IndusOS, a person familiar with the matter said.
A militia group called the Oath Keepers that counts cops, soldiers and veterans is spoiling for war – or so an alarmist profile portraying its members as trigger-happy white supremacists claims, ramping up pre-election fear porn.
Capitalizing on a wave of sensationalistic stories about “white supremacists” and militias menacing America, the Atlantic has shined a spotlight on the Oath Keepers – a decade-old group with members in every US state, some two-thirds of whom hail from law enforcement or the military, which vows to defend the country from “all enemies foreign and domestic.” Armed and dangerous, the group believes the US is currently in a civil war and is spreading that gospel to active-duty servicemembers and cops, the outlet warned on Wednesday.
The organization neither calls itself a militia nor espouses racist ideology, as the Atlantic somewhat grudgingly admitted. Its president, Stewart Rhodes, reminded the writer “We’re not f***ing white nationalists,” pointing out that the term has become an all-purpose smear unconnected to its literal meaning. “Everybody on the right is [called] a white nationalist,” he said.
That didn’t stop the writer from describing the group as an unhinged, paranoid crew of far-right gun nuts who hate leftists and non-whites and believe the US is under attack by hostile elements, all but plagiarizing from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s entry on the Oath Keepers. The group is described as “based on a set of baseless conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy the liberties of Americans,” a line which hasn’t aged well in the era of coronavirus lockdowns. Ironically, it was the SPLC that forwarded a leaked 25,000-strong Oath Keepers membership roster to journalists, affirming the group’s paranoia.
The writer sat in on an Oath Keepers meeting in which Rhodes calls Antifa and other rioters “insurrectionists” and declares “we have to suppress that insurrection,” warning the agitators are “eventually… going to be using IEDs.”
Us old vets and younger ones are going to end up having to kill these young kids. And they’re going to die believing they were fighting Nazis.
The Oath Keepers were banned from Twitter earlier this month for supposedly violating its rules against “violent extremist groups” after Rhodes claimed Black Lives Matter and Antifa were terrorists engaged in an “open communist insurrection” and urged Trump to deploy the National Guard across the country, calling the “street assassination of a Trump supporter in Portland” the “first shot” of a civil war.
While the group has a black vice president and has denounced both right-wing provocateurs the Proud Boys and the alt-right in general, its aesthetic and general political orientation have gotten it lumped in with more unsavory groups. In an era where many Americans are leery of speaking ill of Black Lives Matter – with good reason, as those who’ve lostjobs or universitypositions can attest – the group has not hesitated to condemn them as “Marxists,” and for those unfamiliar with the many militia groups in the US, most bands of burly gun-toting men look alike. They have not hesitated to threaten violence against rioters and believe November's election will bring massive unrest, a view shared by their further-right counterparts.
While the media continue to hold up right-wing militias as the number-one threat to the nation, Rhodes for his part insisted the real threats were leftist militias like the John Brown Gun Club and the Not F***ing Around Coalition – plus, of course, Antifa, which the FBI continues to insist does not actually exist even as President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr denounce its members as domestic terrorists.
For better or worse, the constant harping on the militia threat has taken root in the American psyche – paranoid liberals seeing white supremacists under every rock recently mistook the “P” on Portland police officers’ hats for a logo of right-wing provocateurs the Proud Boys when it actually stood for “police.” Trump was ordered to condemn the group during Tuesday’s presidential debates, and when he ordered them to “stand back and stand by,” it was bafflingly interpreted as an endorsement.
