There has been a lot of controversy around the ‘Kimbho’ messaging app from Patanjali, which emerged as a competitor to WhatsApp earlier this week. The claimed Patanjali app turned out to be copy of another messaging app developer by a US-based startup that also developed Kimbho. And it isn’t on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store anymore.
A Patanjali spokesperson has been quoted saying that the app, claimed to be a security disaster by a security researcher, has been taken down after getting massive attention with over 160,000 app downloads on the Google Play Store.
Apparently, the app has been released in the beta version this week, and is slated to be officially launched on 21 June. The spokesperson also said that the idea behind the Kimbho app is to protect the private information of users in India.
The app is in testing mode and has been made available on Google Playstore for trials. Our idea of launching the app is not driven by plans to generate revenues. The only goal is to protect the country’s private information.Acharya Balkrishna, Managing Director, Patanjali
He has been quoted as saying this in a report by The Print. The report also quotes the developer of the Kimbho app, Aditi Kamal, who is the founder of the company called Appdios. She completed her M.Sc in Computer Science from the University of Southern California.
After working in the US for over a decade, I wanted to design an application for my country. I decided to come back and approached seniors at Patanjali with the idea of developing the home-grown chat platform.Aditi Kamal, founder, Appdios
Talking about the origin of the app, Kamal says that she reached out to the Patanjali team, who immediately approved the idea and asked to design an app layered around encryption, keeping it safe from data leaks.
Speaking about the concept behind Kimbho, Balkrishna said: “To ensure the privacy of Indian consumers, we are launching a swadeshi alternative of WhatsApp.” He further assured that no data from the user is saved on their server or cloud.
Questions Unanswered
While it’s good to see the developer fielding questions about the Kimbho app, but we have a few questions that are yet to be clarified.
- Has Appdios developed both Bolo and Kimbho Messenger? (It seems like it has.)
- If so, why did it end up cloning the same app, and not just re-brand Bolo?
- When Kimbho claims to be encrypted, what standard has it designed the app over?
- And finally, how can the app claim to be keeping data of users secure? This is a US-based company after all.
- There were doubts raised about the security of the app. Can those be clarified?
We have reached out to Aditi Kamal so that she can help us find answers to the points we have raised. This story will be updated if and when we get a response from her.
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