The Indian government's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has given a group of Indian startup founders around two weeks to compile a document with issues with Google's dominance in India, and other concerns around the dominance of large platforms in India. Held on Saturday, starting at 7pm over Microsoft Teams, MEITY heard grievances from between 35-40 Indian founders, with large parts of the call focusing on the dominance of Google and its 30% commission, for almost an hour and half. The move to impose 30% commission on transactions for digital goods and services in India, and the imposition of the Google Play store billing, has many Indian founders up in arms. Importantly, this morning, Google has announced that it is deferring this policy only for India till 2022, and that it will hold policy workshops, but we won't be surprised if the pushback against Google continues. In participation on the call, according to more than four sources that MediaNama spoke with, apart from MEITY Secretary Ajay Sawhney and other MEITY officials, were Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Matrimony.com founder Murugavel Janakiraman, PhonePe founder Sameer Nigam, Dream11 founder Harsh Jain, MapMyIndia founder Rohan Verma, Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal, Data Infosystems founder Ajay Data, Sheroes founder Sairee Chahal, investors Anand Lunia and Miten Sampat, Times of India Group's Satyan Gajwani, as well as lawyer Suhaan Mukherjee, among others. Note that several participants also declined to speak with MediaNama about this call, given that MEITY requested that it be kept off…
