The spat between Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal and Microsoft’s professional networking site, LinkedIn, is the latest in the series of tiffs between domestic start-ups and big tech firms. This time, the fight is actually over a trivial issue and the reaction from both the sides is disproportionate to the alleged wrongdoing. However, it once again underlines the fact that big tech firms need to be more democratic and inclusive in a world where technology has flattened the world. Aggarwal’s ire is directed at LinkedIn which removed his post on “pronoun illness”. He has accused the platform of imposing a “forced ideology” over gender pronouns. In retaliation, Aggarwal has decided to stop using cloud computing platform Microsoft Azure and migrate to Krutrim’s AI cloud. Gender pronouns mean not identifying individuals through their sex, and therefore referring to them as they/them instead of he/she. There is nothing wrong with people not wanting to be identified exclusively as a male or a female, or not wanting to disclose their gender. It’s of course fairer for the trans people. However, viewing the ideology as the only progressive one and categorising all others as regressive and resorting to cancel culture is surely a problem. LinkedIn certainly is at fault for removing the post under the garb of its policies.
But Aggarwal’s reaction to turn the issue as a conflict between Indian and Western value systems was uncalled for. He created Krutrim as an Indian ChatGPT platform in December, and cloud and other digital infrastructure are natural extensions. Krutrim Cloud is anyway designed to offer GPU-as-a-service on its AI computing infrastructure, allowing enterprises and developers to train and fine-tune their models. Aggarwal could have very well announced shifting the workload from Azure at a later date rather than seize the controversy as an opportunity, prompting some to term it as just another marketing gimmick. It would also have been better had Aggarwal moved Ola’s workload to the cloud services of either Google or Amazon. Apart from protesting, he would have signalled the choices available globally. Turning such fights into local versus global is superfluous as the physical infrastructure — servers of any domestic cloud service provider — is located overseas.
At the same time, big tech firms like Microsoft and others should be mindful of the fact that such arbitrary actions do not serve their purpose, especially at a time when the world over they are under regulatory crosshairs. In India, Google is involved in a legal dispute with several home-grown start-ups over the fee structure it charges for in-app purchases on its Play Store. A similar investigation is pending against Apple with the Competition Commission of India. Platforms like Twitter (now X) had opposed the 2021 amendments brought in by the government in the IT rules, mandating them to appoint regulatory officers in India. They also protested the government’s directions to remove certain posts and accounts seen as inimical to national security.
On his part, Aggarwal should rethink his strategy. He’s now suggesting that India build its own full technology stack, which includes AI models, cloud infrastructure, data centres and chips. He should know that a move in this direction started long back and is progressing well. But such things evolve, they don’t emerge overnight. There is no point in using tech policies to fight personal battles. The country’s IT laws provide legal remedies for such cases.