India's dominant digital payment app, PayTM, suddenly left the Google Play Store and reappeared last Friday. However, Google did not reinstate its PayTM First Games fantasy cricket app on the grounds that it violated its gaming policies. Now India's most beloved startup is backed by rivals like PhonePe in this battle. Based on India's Unified Payment Interface (UPI), PhonePe was launched in 2016 and currently has more than 210 million users who can access its services in 10 Indian languages in addition to English. The company believes that India needs to strengthen its anti-competition laws so that natural monopolies are aware of the problems and respond to them within a certain period of time.
A good fight to fight
When you reach a 95% monopoly situation, what is the rule of share in the market you are playing in is the question to ask yourself, says Sameer Nigam, co-founder and CEO of PhonePe. "I think this is where our laws fall short, our ICC (the Indian Competition Commission) falls short." The Economic Times report quotes Nigam as saying that he has yet to speak to PayTM founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, though the answer is not to join a fight, but to collaborate to create an alternative. at Google in India. “We have some really good applications like Indus OS in India MapmyIndia, but how can we as an ecosystem shape them?” he says. Removing the fantasy gambling app just before India locked in on its annual cricket jamboree called the IPL, Google had claimed that its policies did not allow any online casinos or allow unregulated gambling apps that facilitate sports betting. , including fantasy sports in India.
Where is the clarity of the policy?
Nigam challenges this policy by stating that the Supreme Court had previously defined the game as based on skill and not fortune. "To date, we have no idea why India can't play fantasy, poker or rummy games given that the Supreme Court has ruled that they are skill-based games, which is frustrating as an ecosystem." PayTM bluntly accused Google of "modding it" to remove its store cash back program, even though Google Pay offered a similar one. “We affirm that our cash back campaign complied with the guidelines, as well as with all the laws of the land. We didn't break any rules and there were no infractions. It is not related to the game in any way,” PayTM said on the blog. Given the confusion, according to PhonePe's Nigam, while monopolies are the natural result of a great idea, the challenge with Google is that every time an app is retired, developers are looking for an audience that seems to be entering a hole. "We've had one from Apple in the past and got a response from their policy team within 48 hours," Nigam says, saying this is what Google needs to learn. But the question is, do they really care? Android accounts for more than 95% of the Indian smartphone market thanks to its partnerships with various phone manufacturers. So it's a good fight, says Nigam.