Rush starts to rival Facebook

– An Indian billionaire who promised to help fund a rival to Facebook said yesterday he had been “overwhelmed” with the response as the world grapples with concerns about data privacy.

Anand Mahindra, whose Mahindra Group business empire spans everything from cars to real estate, sparked a flurry of brainstorming as Facebook reels from a scandal over the misuse of user data. Facebook has been under pressure to explain how data on up to 50 million users was allegedly taken and used in political campaigns.

Mahindra urged India’s tech entrepreneurs to devise “our own social networking company” and offered seed funding to startups to get the better ideas rolling. India has the world’s highest number of Facebook users at 241 million, according to a report published last June by Amsterdam-based firm The Next Web.

India’s information technology ministry last week formally requested that Cambridge Analytica – the data analysis company at the centre of the Facebook firestorm – provide clarity over its practices by month end. That followed reports Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party and the opposition Congress had used the firm in previous elections, sparking a series of alleged data abuses which both deny. –

New Delhi