Was the Mitron app made in Pakistan? Is it just a clone of TikTok, and why was it briefly removed from Google Play? For better or for worse, the app which became famous as a ‘Made in India’ alternative to TikTok, at a time when a huge YouTube versus TikTok fight was brewing and anti-China sentiment in India ran so high that an app called Remove China Apps ended up being one of the most popular free apps in India, has gained a lot of notoriety. This only increased once reports broke that the source code of the app wasn’t developed by the Mitron team but instead, purchased, for just about Rs 2,500, from a software developer based in Pakistan.
Was the Mitron app made in Pakistan? Is it just a clone of TikTok, and why was it briefly removed from Google Play? For better or for worse, the app which became famous as a ‘Made in India’ alternative to TikTok, at a time when a huge YouTube versus TikTok fight was brewing and anti-China sentiment in India ran so high that an app called Remove China Apps ended up being one of the most popular free apps in India, has gained a lot of notoriety. This only increased once reports broke that the source code of the app wasn’t developed by the Mitron team but instead, purchased, for just about Rs 2,500, from a software developer based in Pakistan.
Although Agarwal and Khandelwal have been speaking up now to try and make it clear that their app does not have any connection to Pakistan, their responses have been unclear at best. Khandelwal said that they purchased the licensed code and a template of the Mitron app from Envato. “Our focus was on the suitability of the initial template we purchased and the origin of the developer was neither displayed nor relevant,” he said.
However, Irfan Sheikh, the CEO and co-founder of Pakistan-based software developer Qboxus had already made the same claim — that Qboxus’ code for the TicTic app was purchased from Envato’s marketplace CodeCanyon, to create the Mitron app. In fact, security researcher Karan Saini did an analysis of the code of the Mitron app, and wrote that “several strings with TicTic have been left as it is.”
From the same article, it was noted: “Further, a ‘change_log’ file present in the decompiled Mitron source code contains the string ‘com.dinosoftlabs.tictic’ – which is the package name of the TicTic application developed and released by Qboxus.”
However, at this point, the Mitron founders are not willing to confirm that the code they purchased was from Qboxus. Asked about it, Khandelwal said, “Our focus was on the suitability of the initial template we purchased and the origin of the developer was neither displayed nor relevant.” In all his replies, Khandelwal completely avoided mentioning Qboxus directly.
However, Sheikh, who initially reached out to multiple publications to let people know about the connection between TicTic and Mitron, has also decided not to speak further on the matter.
What’s left is a mess of contradictory claims, where Khandelwal both agrees that he purchased the code from Envato and then says that it was fully proprietary, and also says that any claim by any party claiming that it is a repackaged app is “false, malicious and libellous,” despite the references in the codebase of Mitron to TicTic, as noted in the analysis by Saini reported in The Quint.
We have reproduced tWas the Mitron app made in Pakistan? Is it just a clone of TikTok, and why was it briefly removed from Google Play? For better or for worse, the app which became famous as a ‘Made in India’ alternative to TikTok, at a time when a huge YouTube versus TikTok fight was brewing and anti-China sentiment in India ran so high that an app called Remove China Apps ended up being one of the most popular free apps in India, has gained a lot of notoriety. This only increased once reports broke that the source code of the app wasn’t developed by the Mitron team but instead, purchased, for just about Rs 2,500, from a software developer based in Pakistan.
Mitron app co-founders Shivank Agarwal (left) and Anish Khandelwal (right)
On the purchasing of the code part, we certainly know that Envato is a marketplace — just like Apple App Store or Google Play for getting apps. I even used to buy some themes from Envato for my college WordPress sites a few years back. But why aren’t you revealing the name of the developer from whom you bought the code? The Qboxus team is showing Mitron as one of their projects on their site and even on their Envato author page. So, if they don’t have any role in the app, should you not say that explicitly?
It is unfortunate that when any success story like Mitron happens, there are always others who want to claim their place in the limelight. If Qboxus have used our brand name Mitron on their website, they have done so illegally and we will pursue this matter accordingly.
