Bolo Indya gets boot, removed from Google Play Store

Bolo Indya gets boot, removed from Google Play Store

The social media app was accused by music company T-Series for copyright violation

Social media aap Bolo Indya gets the boot from the Google Play Store. Google took the action following a complaint lodged with it by the Indian music industry giant T-Series.

T-Series accused the Gurugram-based company of copyright violation, leading to its removal from Google's Play Store platform. Bolo Indya was established in 2019 by Varun Saxena and Tanmai Paul, where its users could upload their daily activities. The platform boasts of about 7 billion users.

T-Series had served an infringement notice to Bolo Indya and other social media/video sharing platforms about a year ago demanding to be paid around ₹3.5 crore in damages from using its copyrighted contents.

Most of the companies, excluding Bolo Indya, have already settled their dispute with T-Series, earning the ire of the music company.

"Bolo Indya is a habitual offender and we had sent them various legal notices but they continued to infringe our copyrights and, thus, we wrote to Google under applicable laws to take down this infringing app from their app store," T-Series President Neeraj Kalyan told a news agency.

Neeraj Kalyan told the news agency that T-Series takes infringement very seriously and will not shy away from taking more stringent legal action against Bolo Indya and any other such infringing platforms to protect its copyrights.

A Bolo Indya spokesperson has termed the development as a temporary hiccup, explaining that it due to some dispute with T-Series, and asserting that it would be back soon after resolving the issue with T-Series and Google.

"T-Series acted in bad faith by ignoring our communication to them to discuss content licensing, and by this move, they are only discouraging the early-stage start-ups," the Bolo Indya spokesperson said, adding that the company shall always work in coordination with the ecosystem and complying with all laws.

"We assure our users that all their created content and transaction details for in-app currency purchases are safe, and Bolo Indya will be back soon on Play Store," the spokesperson said.

Bolo Indya allows content creators to earn money for their content by accepting micropayments from their followers. The company had claimed late last year that some of its content creators were earning between ₹60,000 to ₹70,000 per month from the platform's services.