Mitron App : Indian TikTok has a Pakistan connection

Mitron is a free Short Video and Social Platform. It is designed for people to showcase their innovative videos inline with our theme of light humor. Mitron provides an easy and seamless interface for users to create, edit and share their videos, and at the same time browse through a library of top videos across the globe.

Mitron is to create a platform where people can come and entertain themself with small videos posted by people across the globe and at the same time create a social incentive for people to share and create their own videos.

Mitron vs TikTok

Mitron App is available on Google Play Store and downloaded more than 5 million times. It is released on 11 April and now its size is about 8 MB. It provides same platform as TikTok like making video and editing it with different filters and also sharing at different social media platforms. As it is called an Indian App and Chinese TikTok competitor mostly people are uninstalling TikTok from their mobile and installing Mitron App. It has many bugs but about 3 lakhs of people give their positive review on Play Store, mostly give 5-star to this so called Indian TikTok App. While talking about TikTok App its reviews become good like the old days before the controversy it is now about 4.4-star because Google removes more than 8 millions of reviews due to its privacy policies.

Mitron vs TicTic

Many sources claims that the app has been developed by an IIT Roorkee student named Shivank Agarwal, which was claimed by Deepak Abbot, ex-senior vice president at Paytm, on Twitter.

The Mitron app had garnered a lot of attention amid the growing clamour for 'Make-in-India' and 'vocal for local'. However, the report says that the app was never really made by an IIT student in the country. Instead, its entire source code, including its features and user interface, was bought from Qboxus, a Pakistani software developer company.

The Quint, has revealed that Mitron, which has ridden high on an anti-China and anti-TikTok sentiment, has, in fact, been rebranded from an app called TicTic, developed by a Pakistan-based company QBoxus.

An initial glance at both applications does indicate that certain features might be similar, but that could perhaps be written-off as both of them attempting to emulate the Tik Tok user experience.

Irfan Sheikh, founder and CEO, QBoxus said “the app has been purchased on 1 April 2020 for a price of $34 (~Rs 2,600).”

The company said they have the Code Canyon generated invoice as well, but declined to share sharing it would amount to a breach of client-customer privacy. “The developer just changed the package name, brand name, splash screen, and some strings, and boom, here we have the new Indian-made app - Mitron,” the Sheikh said.

Sheikh affirms that the problem is not this. “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.”

The Application Programming Interface (API) for both applications are completely identical, which alone allows one to fully ascertain the claim that Mitron is indeed only a re-skinned iteration of TicTic.

In an email response to queries, ShopKiller e-Commerce, which is the promoter behind the Mitron app, said, “We want to work in stealth mode, and didn't want people to know us by our name. I found 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.”

While the Make in India narrative may work for many, particularly with PM Narendra Modi’s Aatmanirbhar and vocal for local push, it is important to hold checks and balances in place before promoting such apps. ShopKiller, the pseudonym hiding the promoters of the app, failed to provide an adequate response regarding Mitron’s privacy policy, or any info regarding the scarcity of details about the app.

It is important to note that purchasing an app’s source code and using it with a different name is not illegal or unprecedented. Qboxus has in the past built multiple apps that work as clones of other popular apps. Some of its offerings include Hashgram (based on Instagram), Foodies Single Restaurant (akin to Zomato) and TicTic (replicated from TikTok).

So, the final words are, don't make anything trending just on the name of PM it may be dangerous for your privacy. Just like this Mitron, for boycotting Chinese TikTok you may install the Pakistan's TicTic rebadged app which was just bought at Rs. 2600.

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