iSPIRT sees dissent rising after Sharad Sharma's lax treatment

Pallav Nadhani, CEO of FusionCharts, exits grouping over governance failure

India's software products lobby group iSPIRT has seen members exit, including FusionCharts CEO Pallav Nadhani over governance failure after co-founder Sharad Sharma last week admitted to using anonymous Twitter accounts to troll anti-Aadhaar activists.

These members were unhappy with governance failure at iSPIRT and the kid glove treatment towards Sharma after he was exposed by Kiran Jonnalagadda, founder of Hasgeek, a platform for technology professionals.

Nadhani confirmed that he had quit iSPIRT but did not offer any further comment on the issue.

The guidelines and compliance committee (IGCC) that was setup to investigate into the issue, barred Sharma from interacting with the public on behalf of iSPIRT for four months. Sharma also acknowledged that 'Sudham' a programme inside iSPIRT to troll anti-Aadhaar activists has been dissolved.

A member of iSPIRT who did not want to be named said that the organisation was currently collecting feedback from its volunteers but had not arrived at a decision yet. The committee's decision which was communicated to the 200 odd members of iSPIRT was greeted with a flurry of angry responses.

Some members have questioned the group's obsession with blindly promoting Aadhaar and India Stack, saying it was a diversion from iSPIRT's original intent of promoting software products and companies building them in India. Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder and architect of Aadhaar is a mentor to the volunteer grouping.

iSPIRT was formed as an alternate platform to promote homegrown software product firms after members led by Sharma split from NASSCOM in 2013, saying the Indian IT services lobby was too focused on IT Services companies

Sanjay Jain, a former product manager of Aadhaar, will set up a new communications framework at iSPIRT. He said that the organisation did not have any official comment to offer on the developments apart from the IGCC panel's decision. Other senior members when contacted said they were not authorised to speak on the issue.

The issue sparked off when anti-Aadhaar activist Jonnalagadda wrote on blogging platform Medium on how he had worked out that Sharma was behind Twitter handles such as @Confident_India which made personal attacks on him and other activists. He alleged that the accounts were created using Sharma's personal mobile number, which Sharma denied at the time but later admitted he had done.

"No, the trolls are still there. The people who quit did it in protest. The trolls have hijacked iSpirt," wrote Jonnalagadda on his Twitter handle on Tuesday.