NEW DELHI. Mahindra group chief
Anand Mahindra has said he’d like to fund an Indian social media start-up to rival social media giant
Facebook.
In the aftermath of the
Cambridge Analytica (CA) scandal that rocked Facebook last week, Mahindra wondered on Twitter if the time was right to build an alternative social networking platform based in India.
The noted industrialist promised seed capital to any Indian start-up that can professionally manage an Indian version of Facebook.
“Beginning to wonder if it’s time to consider having our own social networking company that is very widely owned & professionally managed & willingly regulated. Any relevant Indian start-ups out there? If any young teams have such plans I’d like to see if I can assist with seed capital,” said Mahindra on Twitter.
Mark Zuckerberg-owned Facebook is being accused of compromising the privacy of 50 million users by sharing their details with CA, a British data analytics firm, which in turn used that data to allegedly manipulate the US elections.
The scandal even triggered a firestorm in India, with both BJP and the Congres accusing each other of links with CA.
Meanwhile, IT minister
Ravi Shankar Prasad asked Facebook to come clean about the data leak, and threatened to summon
Zuckerburg to India under the Indian IT act, if his company was found misusing its influence to rig elections in the country.
