The Chinese Runway

The ban on apps post the border standoff is an opportunity for Indian tech startups to fill in the vacuum and for investors to take bigger bets on them

- Harichandan Arakali

India’s ban on 59 Chinese-owned and operated mobile apps can have two-pronged ramifications: Experts whom Forbes India spoke to say, on one hand, it reflects the emerging realpolitik between the two most populous nations in the world shifting to the digital arena; on the other, it could be an opportunity for India’s tech startups to build platforms that are global in scale, but also respect user privacy.

“The ban highlights the importance of cybersecurity as part of geopolitics,” says Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and founder of the law firm Mishi Choudhary and Associates. As offline and online lives converge, politics, foreign policy and trade relations will increasingly get entwined with what happens in the digital world.

Nitin Pai, director of The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy in Bengaluru, points to the geopolitical angle to the ban: “By choosing to retaliate in a domain different from the Himalayan frontiers, New Delhi is signalling that the ‘business as usual’ approach, where trade and investment were pursued agnostic to politics, is at risk.”

Adds Pai: “China’s great firewall blocks Indian content and users from accessing the Chinese market; China has long blocked foreign apps and is hardly in any position to complain when given the treatment it reserves for others. In geopolitical terms, China’s aggression is witnessing the evolution of a countervailing coalition. In cyberspace terms, if China insists on firewalling itself out of the global internet, India has made it clear that it will not be part of the digital Sinosphere.”