Startup Founders Voice Support For Net Neutrality


BANGALORE:  Bangalore’s startups are speaking out about the need for net neutrality. Based on interviews by Economictimes.indiatimes.com, here is a compilation of the views of many founders.  Sunal Jain, the founder and CEO of the app developer @MobiNxt, said, "Without net neutrality, startups will fail. Consumers won't be ready to pay for a new, innovative product." 

Many policy experts agree. Prasanth Sugathan, Counsel at Software Freedom Law Center, said that Digital India, the plan by the government, will not be useful without net neutrality, which promises a level playing field.

"Just think of a scenario when a smaller player is shut out by an initiative like AirtelBSE 0.65 % Zero....which creates an uneven playing field for smaller players. It definitely leads to discrimination," says Sugathan.

He adds that organizations like Internet.org are not really philanthropic as they are tied to major for profit Internet companies, and focus on marketing and branding for them.

Aravind Ravi Sulekha, the 30-year-old CTO of Scrollback, a company that is developing a Whatsapp-like feature for online forums also says, "We're a pre-revenue startup and will not be able to pay telcos any money, even if we wanted to. We have not budgeted for it in our costs.I must mention that we'll be directly affected if anti-net neutrality billing or blocking is allowed for chat apps, and this is a source of great worry." 

Antony Alex, founder and CEO of myLaw-.net, an online legal education platform says, “ Schemes like Airtel Zero will stifle innovation. A country like ours needs open access to Internet. If we want to spread literacy and education, this is our best bet. We are an online learning company and for online learning companies, users need various tools to access." 

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