Group representing startups seeks govt intervention in Google Play ops, ads

The government must ensure "frivolous entities" bidding on Google Ads don’t corner keywords claimed by brands, said a group representing startups on Wednesday as it sought a India-specific policy on the tech giant’s Play store.

Aatmnirbhar Digital India Foundation (ADIF) said bidding of company-specific keywords such as "matrimony" or "Map My India" has resulted in competitors capitalising on the brand value of companies.

“Companies end up in spending crores of money to protect their own brands to prevent their customers going to competitors or frivolous entities. Companies are losing their revenue and customers because of Google not protecting brands,” said Murugavel Jankiraman, founder & CEO, Matrimony.com.

ADIF aims to assist in the creation of forward-looking regulatory processes and ease of doing business policies to propel India as the top destination for innovation and capital.

“To protect the interests of Indian startups, we need to create an India specific policy framework and work in a collaborative manner going forward. We request the government that no organisation specific keywords should be permitted for bidding by third parties and ASCI guidelines should be expanded to cover search engine advertising to avoid such in future,” said Ajay Data, ADIF Secretary General.

“Every effort should be made to eliminate any bias and manipulation in the search and ranking algorithms attributing to advertisement keywords, to eliminate any loss to brands,” said Rohan Verma, CEO & Executive Director, MapmyIndia.

Snehil Khanor, co-founder and CEO of TrulyMadly, Ritesh Malik, founder of Innov8 Coworking, and Sairee Chahal, founder & CEO of Sheroes, are some other members of ADIF.