Vijay Shekhar Sharama, the Founder and CEO of Indian digital payments major Paytm, today put out a Tweet telling Indians to move on to the message app platform Signal in the light of WhatsApp tweaking its privacy policy and telling the world that it would be sharing data with Facebook.
"They say, market has power. We are the largest market. Here in India WhatsApp/Facebook are abusing their monopoly & taking away millions of users' privacy for granted. We should move on to @signalapp NOW. It is up to us to become victim or reject such moves," Sharma wrote on Twitter.
In the normal scheme of things this might seem just a normal suggestion. In fact, there has been a huge backlash against WhatsApp privacy tweak that platforms like Telegram and Signal have already found huge takers in the last three days in India.
Also, the world's richest person and Tesla founder Elon Musk had also simply tweeted 'Use Signal'.
But there is more than what meets the eye in Paytm founder's tweet.
- PayTM and PayTM First Games apps disappear from Play Store
- More than 6.1 billion people will use digital payments by 2023
Why is Paytm targeting WhatsApp?
They say, market has power. We are the largest market. Here in India WhatsApp / Facebook are abusing their monopoly & taking away millions of users' privacy for granted.We should move on to @signalapp NOW. It is upto us to become victim or reject such moves. https://t.co/iCmKoyLc5xJanuary 11, 2021
For starters, Paytm has a thing or two against global tech biggies like Google and Facebook.
Last year, Paytm found itself (along with Paytm Games) temporarily out of Play Store. Since then, Paytm has been spearheading a campaign against Google. It has also floated the idea of a mini App store of Indian vintage to rival Google's Play Store.
After that, Paytm's supremacy in India's digital payments market challenged with the formal permission for the roll out of WhatsApp Pay in India.
WhatsApp Pay, with WhatsApp being ubiquitous in India, has the potential to weaken Paytm and others.
So now when WhatsApp is under pressure, Paytm is not ready to miss the opportunity to cut it down to size. If WhatsApp is hit, WhatsApp Pay, which anyway has not set any river on fire, will be hit. And that will help Paytm.
Also, there is a real clamour in India for alternatives to WhatsApp. Signal and telegram have had huge takers. One Indian app Arattai is on its way.
And if tech biggies like Paytm hammer their way, WhatsApp will face further pressure.
Paytm is a decade a older than WhatsApp Pay. It was launched in August 2010.
