BharatMatrimony, GOQii, other Indian start-up leaders join Paytm against Google

Paytm has created a ₹10-crore fund to help app developers use its recently launched mini play store app to take on Google.

Announcing the new app store at a developer conference, Vijay Shekhar Sharma said that Paytm is hoping to sign up 1 billion apps by 2022 on its new platform. “We are going to do city wise campaign to get more and more app developers on the mini app store,” Shekhar said. “We want to do good things for the developers in India,”he added.

Paytm will not charge any fee from developers who sign up on the mini-app store.

This comes even as Google last month announced that it would require apps to use its own payments system with a few exceptions. It will be charging a 30 per cent transaction fee for all in-apps purchases from April 2022.

Speaking at the conference, Vishal Gondal, founder, GOQii, said that foreign companies like Google do not comply with Indian rules. “They just act as a money collection company here,” he said adding that Paytm’s mini-app store offers freedom to Indian app developers.

Rajesh Sawhney, Founder, GSF Accelerator, said that there is no place for a single gate keeper that too from a foreign country. “The main issue is consumer choice. How can we have that 95 per cent of app store ecosystem in India is controlled by Google. This will be abused in many ways,” Sawhney said.

J Murugavel, Founder, BharatMatrimony.com, said that Google controls India’s Internet. “Today we all are under the mercy of Google. Imagine if we were to say that you have to go through only BharatMatrimony for getting married. We have to free India from the clutches of Google.”

Lack of transparency

Anand Lunia, founding partner, India Quotient, said that there is a lack of transparency when it comes to financial information on Google operations India.

Paytm on Wednesday accused Google of having a double standard in terms of its Play Store policies and its ads business.

Google last month had removed Paytm and Paytm first games for alleged violations of the Play Store’s gambling policy. Paytm in a blog post stated that Google does not allow the company to promote its real money app through its own app. However, it will enable the companies to promote the app on its video-sharing platform YouTube for a “hefty fee.”