After ceding control to investors, start-ups turn to govt for protection

A lobby group called Indiatech.org is being set up by Flipkart and Ola to represent the interests of local start-ups

After a year of failing to put pressure on the government to favour homegrown start-ups over multinationals, Flipkart's Sachin Bansal and Ola's Bhavish Aggarwal are setting up a lobby group —Indiatech.org — to represent the interest of local start-ups such as Flipkart, Ola and MakeMyTrip to the government.

In December 2016, Bansal and Aggarwal had publicly stated that the government should favour foreign capital and not foreign firms, a model similar to what China had followed. Their statements got them ridiculed in the industry, but several Indian start-ups began aligning with their movement to save themselves from