TikTok’s Rival Mitron App is Not Indian But Pakistani? Real Owner Refutes Claims of it Being Developed by IIT Student

Mitron App dents the image of PM Modi's 'Make in India' and 'vocal for local' push as reports of it being a Pakistani app in disguise surface instead of being developed by an IIT Roorkee student

Published: May 30, 2020 7:25 PM IST

By Trending Desk | Edited by Zarafshan Shiraz

Mitron App falsely claimed to be Indian, developed by Pakistani firm
Mitron App falsely claimed to be Indian, developed by Pakistani firm (Photo Courtesy: Twitter)

Just when Indians were swelling with pride on giving a tough competition to Chinese app, TikTok and tapping into PM Modi’s vocal for local suggestion, seems like the bubble has been popped at the height of Mitron App’s popularity and speedy downloads. Crossing 5 million downloads within one month of launch on Google Play Store, the Indian rival was claimed to have been developed by IIT Roorkee’s student Shivank Agarwal and was said to have been named after PM Modi used the term ‘Mitron’ which translates to friends in Hindi, in several of his speeches to Indians.

In an interview with News18, Irfan Sheikh, founder and chief executive of Pakistani software developer company Qboxus, said, “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. There is no problem with what the developer has done. He paid for the script and used it, which is okay. But, the problem is with people referring to it as an Indian-made app, which is not true especially because they have not made any changes.”

Confirming that the app was sold by his company to Mitron for $34 on CodeCanyon, which is about Rs 2,600, Sheikh asserted that Mitron did not opt for the option to host user data on their server which Qboxus offers. He revealed that Mitron instead chose to host their user data on their own server.

The promoter behind the Mitron app, ShopKiller e-Commerce, told the news agency in an email response, “We want to work in stealth mode, and didn’t want people to know us by our name. I found (the article) a little disappointing. I would have liked you to appreciate the fact that we are working hard on the app, and the reason for developing the app was just to give a ‘Make In India’ alternative to people.”

Mitron has reportedly been getting over 5 lakh downloads per day on an average even though it was not available on iOS. Interestingly, the Mitron App’s user interface looked quite similar to that of TikTok’s along with the content which has videos with the TikTok logo on them. The app’s high ratings said, “Lots of bugs. Missing tons of features. Supporting as its Indian.”

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