Ashwini Vaishnaw, Dharmendra Pradhan Test India's Own Android Rival 'BharOS'

Union Minister for Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw and Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday tested "BharOS", an indigenous mobile OS.

IIT Madras said that it was eager to collaborate with government agencies, service providers and private sectors to grow the use of indigenous BharOS. ( Image courtesy: ANI )

Union Minister for Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw and Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday tested "BharOS", an indigenous mobile operating system (OS) developed by IIT Madras. A company that was incubated at IIT Madras has made BharOS and it said it would help India's 100 crore mobile phone users.

"There will be difficulties in this journey and there are many people around the world who will bring difficulties and will not want any such system to be successful...," Ashwini Vaishnaw was quoted as saying by news agency ANI while testing BharOS.

India's own BharOS has been developed by JandK Operations Private Limited (JandKops). Its creators, says a report by Hindustan Times, say that the OS will provide consumers greater freedom, power and flexibility, which can only be modified according to their needs. The technology claims to completely change how users perceive security and privacy on mobile handets.

Unlike massively popular Android OS, the "lightweight and bloatware-free" BharOS does not come pre-loaded with apps. Android OEMs usually launch handsets with a few native and default Google apps.

IIT Madras was quoted as saying that it was eager to collaborate with government agencies, service providers and private sectors to grow the use of indigenous BharOS in India.

This development comes after tech behemoth Google has been forced to allow third-party app stores in the official Google Play Store. The company has a few more days to comply with this, apart from the fine that it will have to pay, which has been imposed by the Supreme Court.

The apex court last week granted one week's time to Google India to comply with the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) order that directed the technology giant to deposit 10 per cent of Rs 1,337.76 crore penalty imposed on it by the competition watchdog Competition Commission of India (CCI) for alleged anti-competitive practices.

Google had earlier warned that the growth of its massively popular Android ecosystem in India will stall due to an antitrust order by the CCI that asks it to change how it markets the Android platform in the country.