‘It’s a Google-Nirbhar Bharat, Not Atmanirbhar Bharat’: States Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma
22 September 2020
‘It is a Google-Nirbhar Bharat, Not Atmanirbhar Bharat,’ the recent statement by Paytm’s founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma comes up days after the removal of their main Paytm wallet app off the Google PlayStore .
On last Friday, Google had taken the digital payments app Paytm off its Playstore, stating that the app was allowing its customers to play online games which was encouraging sports betting. Earlier that day, Google India as a part of its blog had also posted guidelines against the gambling practices and policies in the country.
Google’s move came as Paytm promoted its fantasy sports service “Paytm first Games”, which was also available as a standalone app on Google PlayStore , and was removed with the Paytm Wallet App as well. Paytm had reportedly launched a new feature called “Paytm Cricket League”, a day ahead of the beginning of Indian Premier League on its wallets app. The feature would have enabled users to win cash-back based on the performance of the players, which as per Google’s terms, was a violation of the Play Gambling Policy.
Even though the app returned to the store eight hours later, after the alleged “cash-back feature” was removed by Paytm; but the controversy still continues. Sharma stated that Google considers their giving out stickers which can be used to avail cash-back as gambling. He also added that “It is gambling because they own, control and regulate the platform (Play Store) and there is no other place to go”.
Since Google Pay is the biggest competitor payments app against Paytm, he also criticized Google’s practice of taking the apps off from its PlayStore as a means of policy violation and establishing monopoly. The CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma also accused Google of being the “judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one”.
