Indian citizen, feverishly downloading and using the ‘Indian Alternate’ of TikTok because the government pushes it’s ‘Made in India’ campaign, and suddenly sorting out that the app isn’t made in India in any case, but your worst enemy Pakistan.
It looks like the sun is going to be downing on the Indian app Mitron before it could fully dawn, with its publisher confessing that the app is nothing but a hasty repackage of the Pakistani TikTok clone called ‘TicTic’.
Mitron amassed over 5 million users in only a month. But why would someone use a shabby just like an ideal original app?
The reason is twofold: first, Mitron carried the ‘Indian-origin’ tag; second, Indian netizens have lately begun to boycott TikTok for a few recent controversies bringing down its rating on Google’s Play Store from 4.6 stars to 2.
Sadly for Indians, Mitron found out to be of Pakistani origin with ShopKiller, Mitron’s publisher, purchasing TicTic’s developing codes (Source Codes) and hastily rebranding and uploading it on Google Play with all its bugs and broken codes intact.
Qboxus, the Pakistani app development company behind TicTic, is selling the cookie-cutter version of the app on CodeCanyon, from where the Indian owner of “Mitron” purchased a replica.
The Indian developer bought the code for a meager $34 (about PKR 5,530) and just went ahead to vary the package name, name, splash screen, some strings, and boom! They got themselves a replacement ‘Indian-made’ app.
“We expect customers to customize the code and build something on their own,” said founder and chief executive of Qboxus Irfan Sheikh. “But Mitron’s developer has taken our exact product, changed the brand, and uploaded it on their store,” he added.
A buyer purchasing and using such codes isn’t a drag in today’s world where such white-label apps are routinely sold to assist new apps to build quickly and monetize through advertising.
What’s problematic is that the Indians pertaining to the app as an ‘Indian’ product.
What’s funnier is that the developer didn’t even bother to repair the bugs and issues that were prevalent within the original app.
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They just copy/pasted the entire thing and uploaded it on Google Play, which perhaps is that the classic case of copying somebody’s homework and getting more appreciation for not even doing it right.
But now with the Indian-origin claim shattered and therefore the truth surfacing about India’s new favorite ‘local’ app actually made in Pakistan, the longer term of Mitron hangs within the balance.
This article is originally published in ProPakistani.pk.
