Here's How The Internet Made Flipkart Take A U-Turn On Airtel Zero Deal!

The internet is rejoicing after the news of Flipkart announced that it had walked out of plans to sign up with Airtel zero.

Flipkart snapped deal with airtel.. such an amazon turnaround! ???

¡ª Keh Ke Peheno (@coolfunnytshirt) April 14, 2015

Along "walking away from the ongoing discussions with Airtel for their platform Airtel Zero", Flipkart's official statement mentioned:

We will be committing ourselves to the larger cause of Net Neutrality in India.
We will be internally discussing over the next few days, the details of actions we will take to support the cause.
We will be working towards ensuring that the spirit of net neutrality is upheld and applied equally to all companies in India irrespective of the size or the service being offered and there is absolutely no discrimination whatsoever.

Just hours earlier, Flipkart founder and CEO Sachin Bansal had hit out on Twitter, and later in an interview, when the net had protested against Flipkart signing up with Airtel Zero.

When foreign companies do it in India - Innovation. Indians do it - Violation. #NetNeutralityDiscrimination?

¡ª Sachin Bansal (@_sachinbansal) April 8, 2015

The Airtel Zero platform gave users access to a select set of apps without paying for data charges. Of course, someone had to pay Airtel ¨C and that was the app developers and brands themselves.Flipkart's plan to sign up with Airtel Zero was clearly to fight off ecommerce newcomers, as well as Amazon's 1,155 crore budget to build an India presence.

But the public had spoken. They didn't want Flipkart to sign up with Airtel Zero, because Airtel Zero is setting a dangerous precedent to end net neutrality in India.

Boycotting @Flipkart until they embrace #netneutrality. Was a loyal customer. Encourage others to do the same. Can be no compromise on this.

¡ª Shiv Aroor (@ShivAroor) April 12, 2015

What began with a small campaign on online forums like Reddit India exploded online as celebrities spoke up for net neutrality.

https://t.co/C8TJOL2aWx #SaveTheInternet¡±

¡ª Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) April 11, 2015

That AIB video, and celeb endorsement might have been the final push for Flipkart. People had already started aggressively 'downvoting', and even uninstalling the Flipkart app. India clearly didn't want their favourite shopping app to do something they believe to be unethical. Indians have written lakhs (yes, lakhs) of letters to TRAI objecting against telecom companies like Airtel attempting to regulate apps like Skype, Whatsapp and Viber.

We even spotted the #UninstallFlipkart hashtag hundreds of times across Twitter.

1600+ 1 stars for @flipkart yesterday for being against #NetNeutrality Give them more 1stars http://t.co/qG6jYS6J0c pic.twitter.com/5L3sfIqgY9

¡ª Reddit India (@redditindia) April 10, 2015

But what does Flipkart gain from supporting Net Neutrality?

Apart from the love of its net savvy customers, we could spot what might be a subtle reason for Flipkart to sign up on the Net Neutrality protest train.

Flipkart gives it away in its press statement

" net neutrality is upheld and applied equally to all companies in India irrespective of the size or the service being offered and there is absolutely no discrimination whatsoever."

What that translates to:

If we aren't going to win big with Airtel Zero, no one else is!