Mitron App is Not 'Made in India' by IIT Students, Pakistani Company Claims TikTok Competitor is Nothing But Their Repackaged App TicTic
The entire source code of Mitron, which includes its features and user interface has been brought from Pakistani software developer company, Qboxus. What's also surprising is the company sold the source code of their app to Mitron's promoter for just Rs 2600.
In the last few days, there's a lot of buzz around the 'Made in India' app Mitron. Said to be designed by IIT students from Roorkee it has now come to fore in a News18 report that the app is actually from Pakistan, a repackaged version of their app TicTic. The entire source code of Mitron, which includes its features and user interface has been brought from Pakistani software developer company, Qboxus. What's also surprising is the company sold the source code of their app to Mitron's promoter for just Rs 2600. Meanwhile, the whole controversy recently regarding content on TikTok, pushed a lot of people to ban/uninstall the short video making app and worked in favour of Mitron, which saw over 5 million downloads in a month.
Irfan Sheikh, founder and chief executive of Qboxus told News18, "We expect our customers to use our code and build something on their own. But Mitron’s developer has taken our exact product, changed the logo and uploaded it on their store." He added that the problem is not using the source code, but calling it a 'Made in India' app when the developer has made not a single change to it. Giving more details on the data hosting process, Sheikh confirmed that his company offers to host user data on the server but Mitron chose to host their own data.
ShopKiller e-Commerce which is the promoter behind this app told the report that "they wish to work in stealth mode." They added that they are working on the app to give a Make in India alternative. But the application has already seen over 5 million downloads in a month with all the 'Made in India' and 'vocal for local' approach. It now remains to be seen if there will any action from Google since there is no privacy policy and clarity on the user data by the app. Purchasing an app's source code and using it with a different name is not illegal. Qboxus has built multiple apps in the past which are clones to other popular apps.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 30, 2020 09:41 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).