Dream11 founder Harsh Jain elected IAMAI chairperson as Big Tech firms take back seat

Jain, Magow and Gajwani, who have been elected for a term of two years, replace Google India country head Sanjay Gupta, WhatsApp’s India public policy director Shivnath Thukral, and Razorpay cofounder and CEO Harshil Mathur, respectively.

According to sources in the know, in addition to the four-member executive council, which includes IAMAI president Subho Ray, the 24-member governing council for the 2023-2025 tenure does not include any member from Big Tech companies Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.

The governing council comprises PhonePe’s Sameer Nigam, Infibeam Avenues’ Vishwas Patel, Shaadi.com’s Anupam Mittal, IndMoney’s Ashish Kashyap, Ixigo’s Aloke Bajpai, Nazara Technologies’ Nitish Mittersain, Innov8 founder Ritesh Malik, MapmyIndia’s Rohan Verma, and Matrimony.com’s Murugavel Janakiraman. In addition, it has executives from companies such as Billdesk, Indifi, Indian Express, Info Edge, IndiaMart, Cred, Jupiter, Paytm, Hungama, Paisabazaar, Mobikwik, and Razorpay.

ET had reported earlier that the elections to the internet industry body, which took place earlier this month, were taking place at a time when Indian startups and internet companies had opposed IAMAI’s stand on certain issues, where they alleged it was taking a pro-Big Tech view.

Several Indian internet entrepreneurs had raised issues with IAMAI’s stance on the digital competition law, and even called for a change in the industry body’s leadership.

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Ray did not respond to requests for a comment.

IAMAI had said earlier this month that 83 of its members were contesting the elections for the governing council — the subset of which is the executive council. The contestants receiving the highest number of votes get elected chairperson, vice-chairperson and treasurer in the descending order of the votes.

Times Internet, which is an IAMAI member, is part of the Times Group, which publishes ETtech.

ET had reported on May 13 that the IAMAI had submitted its views to the CDCL, opposing the prescription of ex-ante regulations for digital companies, saying that ex-ante measures “may limit growth not only of the market in question but the digital economy altogether”. Ex-ante regulations aim to address issues identified beforehand preemptively, by laying out a list of dos and don’ts for stakeholders.

IAMAI’s views were opposed by Indian internet companies, including Paytm, which had expressed views that were at variance with those of the industry grouping. Reacting to Paytm’s opposition, Sameer Nigam, PhonePe cofounder and CEO, said ex-ante competition regulations were “a bad idea”, predicting that founders “opportunistically backing ex-ante regulations against others today will beg for less” regulation against themselves tomorrow.

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The outgoing governing council included members such as Airbnb’s Amanpreet Singh Bajaj, Amazon’s Manish Tiwary, Mastercard’s Vikas Sarogi, Microsoft’s Vinay Kumar, Netflix’s Ambika Khurana, Sequoia Capital’s Shweta Rajpal Kohli. In addition, it had several representatives from Indian companies, including BharatPe’s Shashvat Nakrani, Dailyhunt’s Umang Bedi, InMobi’s Vasuta Agarwal, Paisabazaar’s Naveen Kukreja, and others.