Paytm's Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is not happy with the manner in which Silicon Valley giants are operating in the country and his recent comments on Twitter just alludes to it.
"India must welcome global tech companies and must not let them colonise our internet. Their ambitions and intentions are clear in last few weeks," Sharma said in a Twitter post on Wednesday.
India must welcome global tech companies and must not let them colonise our Internet.
— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) February 14, 2018
Their ambitions and intentions are clear in last few weeks ! https://t.co/bbZJIaloqf
Sharma's post comes just days after the popular messaging platform WhatsApp launched its payment option in India, which he believes is "killing" the open unified payments interface (UPI) system.
The new WhatsApp payment feature works on the government-authorized UPI platform, which helps in linking bank accounts for direct money transfer.
But Sharma argues that WhatsApp's parent Facebook is killing the open platform of the UPI through "its custom close garden implementation".
WhatsApp pay currently allows users to transfer money largely among WhatsApp users and not to other UPI IDs.
After failing to win war against India’s open internet with cheap tricks of free basics, Facebook is again in play.
— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) February 14, 2018
Killing beautiful open UPI system with its custom close garden implementation.
I am surprised, champions of open @India_Stack , let it happen ! https://t.co/wIsNuF1AiB
"After failing to win war against India's open internet with cheap tricks of free basics, Facebook is again in play," Sharma wrote in a Twitter post on February 13.
While WhatsApp hasn't replied to Sharma's comment, other players such as MobiKwik and PayU slammed the Paytm founder.
"All incumbents complaining about WhatsApp getting unfair advantage in its UPI implementation to further its business interests — Those who live in glass houses ... there is clear record of private companies who got access first and exclusively when UPI was launched," Bipin Preet Singh, CEO and founder of Mobikwik tweeted.
Likewise Freecharge co-founder Kunal Shah backed the American company with this post on Twitter.
"All companies threatened by WhatsApp payments are going to tag it as anti-national and try to pull it down as it is hard to win on merit against network effects of WhatsApp," said Shah.
