More than 120 startups join hands against Google by forming an association.
Start-ups in India have started raising voice against big techs that are creating a monopoly in the market. The heads of these start-ups have planned to come together and form an association to promote the local start-ups and fight against giant tech businesses like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Twitter. This step has been taken due to arising dissatisfaction among Indian start-ups against Google.
According to the founder of Matrimony.com, Murugavel Janakirman, they are planning to form a new app developers association within a month, this new association will be non-profit and a separate entity, means it will be independent of existing committees like the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
This new committee will only resolve issues of app developers in India. The fact that IAMAI represents India’s mobile and digital ecosystem and has Google India as one of its members, therefore on Saturday they held a closed-door meeting regarding the issues of startup-up of Google creating a monopoly. Neither IAMAI nor Google commented on the matter or regarding the meeting.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm founder and CEO) compared this uproar in the Indian start-up ecosystem with the salt movement, stating that the start-up developers will soon come up as a group and will make an independent congregation. He said that Google cannot be a single gatekeeper to whole India’s internet ecosystem, especially when they claim themselves to be a non-profit Indian entity.
Another reason why 120 startups join hands against Google is the commission pay demand
Recently, Google announced that all the developers using Google play has to pay a 30% commission for the same to the company. After that, the local home-grown start-ups of India started raising their voices against such a decision. Due to which Google has to ease up its policy and provide an extension till 31st March 2022.
But it seems like the founders of the Indian start-up are not satisfied yet and has urged the central government to regulate Google as well as other tech giants in regards to commissions and arbitrary policies of the play store. The Paytm founder demand a customer care service to Indian app, if they are charging such a high amount of commissions then the start-up at least deserved such services.
As we already know Paytm has already taken steps to remove the monopoly in the market by launching its mini-app which will help small startups to get discovered. It also has launched a Rs 10 crore developer fund which serves as a medium to support all these small and big app creators in the country.
