September 15, 2014: On the sidelines of Sundar Pichai’s visit to India

Sundar Pichai, then Google’s Senior VP, was in India for the launch of Android One in India. Prashant Singh, then with Spice Labs, and really the heart and soul of Mobile Monday Delhi, pinged me to ask if I’m going to be at a NASSCOM event with Sundar Pichai in Gurgaon.

Prashant and I used to organise Mobile Monday Delhi together, before I got busy with MediaNama, and he ran it till he eventually wound it up. He remains a close friend, and one of the most insightful people I know: unafraid to give a divergent point of view, share an insight that makes you think of things differently, and challenge your thinking. 

Uninvited, I landed up at the Leela Ambience hotel, and we spent our evening standing at the back (the hall was full) listening to Pichai. On the way back, Prashant hitched a ride with me to the metro station at Jhandewalan (a direct metro to Noida), so we had a good hour to chat in peak hour traffic between Gurgaon and Delhi.

I took this as an opportunity to bounce my concerns about revenue share and the planned Internet.org with him. I wanted to understand what he thought about this, as someone who builds mobile apps. Facebook already has Facebook Zero in India, and Whatsapp had promotional deals with telecom operators. He was a little dismissive about it at that time, didn’t think of this as a significant concern. 

If I can pay and get more downloads for my app by advertising, I remember him asking, what’s wrong with paying and getting more downloads for my app because users won’t be charged data charges fee for using it? Good for the developer, isn’t it? 

I asked Prashant today (17th April 2025, since this post is back-dated) about what he remembered about this discussion, and he says this is quite accurate. Also, he remembers making the point that the telecom operators should offer this to everyone: “whoever wants to buy data should be allowed to buy…unless they are violating any term of resale say drugs etc.”

Prashant was acutely aware of the challenges that VAS companies (which provided ringtones, ringbacktones etc on mobile) faced with telecom operators. Telcos had someone called a Supply Chain Manager, who used to renegotiate revenue share with VAS companies, and their focus each year was to increase the percentage that telecom operators faced.

I remember Viren Popli, a friend who was then Head of Digital at STAR TV, telling me once that he had met one telecom operator for a deal about KBC (Kaun Banega Crorepati), and had discussed a rate. When he went to another telecom operator, trying to negotiate a better deal, he found that they already had information on rates from the other telco. It’s a cartel, he always said.

My other argument was that once you start a revenue share arrangement with a telecom operator, it will be bait-and-switch. Facebook, I pointed out, had already done this with brand pages on its platform: we first paid for making pages with fans, and one day, Facebook flipped the switch and forced people to pay to reach the same users who had signed up to view their updates. 

Prashant didn’t seem to be convinced about all this: the entire situation was perhaps too hypothetical for him, whereas I had been in the thick of debates already.

However, this conversation was important because it foreshadows debates that we had during the Net Neutrality campaign. For me, this debate with Prashant was useful preparation.