Short thread about @Product_Nation and how they operate, as @tam_arund reported this story.
the-ken.com/story/sahay-in…
the-ken.com/story/sahay-in…
iSPIRT is a lobby group, cabal, cartel which pushes policy changes to help them push their technology inside government. These volunteers build Aadhaar, UPI, e-KYC, e-Sign, DigitalLocker. They are paid by iSPIRT with their last salary upto 36 lakhs.
The volunteers they get early access to some of these technologies to start companies on top of them. The ex CTO of Aadhaar started Khosla Labs, early access to UPI is given only to friends of iSPIRT. So if you talk against them, you get legal notices or trolled. True story.
How do they operate? Let me tell you with a hypoethical example. Say you start a animal/dog activity tracker business. There are many people who are doing it. How do you succeed in this market then? You join iSPIRT. You approach one of the investors who is in the iSPIRT network.
You ask this investor to invest in your company. Then you go build a animal unique id solution. Use iSPIRT connections inside government with the help of Nandan Nilekani and other volunteers to make you Animal UID mandatory for all. The only company which can supply this is yours
iSPIRT ensures you are volunteer inside Government, you don't have to answer to RTIs. You are not bound by service rules that apply to government servants like IAS. So you can always come and start this company. They help do all of this for a cut of profit. But ha, under the hood
You get a lot of profit, you will donate some to iSPIRT to be in their good terms. Also the iSPIRT will give some to keep in their good terms. All this while iSPIRT uses this money to blame any foreign technology company taking over Indian market in the name of data colonialism.
iSPIRT heavily pushed back against facebook over #NetNeutrality as fb can be gatekeeper for internet making it hard for Indian startups. Eventually they became the gatekeepers for technology in India. If you don't agree with them, you can't become big. So everyone is silent.
iSPIRT may not have done this exact thing with Animal UID, but they did this with Unique Identity Aadhaar. In regards to the animal UID project, their advocacy inside and outside about tech as great solution created the Aadhaar for cows - Animal UID.
