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India's First Home-grown Social Media Platform Will Be Ready Very Soon. Thanks to Facebook! The invitation was so tempting that even the Chief Digital Officer of Mahindra Group Jaspreet Bindra also pitched his startup idea to his boss, Anand Mahindra on his tweet

By Komal Nathani

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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In the wake of Facebook's data breach controversy, the Indian billionaire Anand Mahindra expressed his willingness to fund a social media platform built out of India. The Chairman of Mahindra Group took to twitter sharing his grief over the broken trust of users by Facebook. He also said he'll be happy to seed fund the startups which are building a secured social media platform.

Here's a glimpse of tweet:

Mahindra's tweet caught a massive traction from startups which are building social media platform. A lot of entrepreneurs started pitching to the tech honcho on the comments section for the support. The invitation was so tempting that even the Chief Digital Officer of Mahindra Group Jaspreet Bindra also pitched his startup idea to his boss, Anand Mahindra on his tweet.

Check out the tweet here:

Mahindra is the leading industrialist of India, whose empire spans from cars to IT to real estate. His tweet got the instant like from Minister of Information and Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad who had earlier warned the Facebook of taking "stringent action" if any attempt was made by them to influence the electoral process in India.

The Indian IT Minister RS Prasad replied on a tweet appreciating the initiative of Anand Mahindra for seed funding India's very own social media platform.

According to media reports, this is not the first time that Mahindra has taken his interests to invest in on projects on Twitter. Just last month, he tweeted about acquiring the property of a fugitive jeweler Nirav Modi in Mumbai, to turn it into a music hub.

The comments of the leading industrialist have come at a time when there is a global outrage all across the world on the users' data breach. The data mining firm Cambridge Analytica has been accused of illegally harvesting the data of 50 million users from Facebook which was allegedly used in political campaigns in 2016 US elections.

India has the world's highest number of Facebook users with 241 million active members, according to a report published last June by Amsterdam-based firm The Next Web.

While giving testimony in front of UK lawmakers, the whistleblower and the ex-employee of The Cambridge Analytica Christopher Wylie had even spoken on the India link with the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Wylie also made the startling revelations over Congress being a client of Cambridge Analytica in the past for the regional elections.

On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg who earlier refused to testify in front of British lawmakers has now accepted to give his testimony before Congress about the social network's data privacy scandal.

Komal Nathani

Former Correspondent, Entrepreneur Asia Pacific

A firm believer of hard work and patience. Love to cover stories that hold a potential to change the momentum of business world. Currently, a part of all-women web team of Entrepreneur’s Asia Pacific edition to jig the wheel of business journalism!

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