Startups taking jibe at each other

When you have such a vast startup ecosystem throbbing at the centre with cut-throat competition, controversies are bound to emerge. Indian startups are now often seen taking a jibe at each other owing to some reason or the other. The recent development has taken place between InnerChef and FreshMenu.

Chaos ensued after the Gurgaon-based food-tech startup InnerChef accused Bangalore-based online first restaurant FreshMenu of unethically using InnerChef’s brand name in their search ads.

Co-founder of InnerChef , Rajesh Sawhney, in his tweet, highlighted FreshMenu’s questionable behaviour of using InnerChef’s name in their advertisement and asked it to ‘behave responsibly’ by focusing on making better food rather than usurping InnerChef’s name.

Accusing FreshMenu of copyright infringement misleading content, unclear relevance of the ad, and abusing the ad network for gaining an unfair advantage by the use of its name, InnerChef has written to Google Adwords and has asked Google to at the ads as they are in clear violation of adwords policy page.

Sawheney told media, “It’s unfortunate that Freshmenu resorted to unethical advertising misusing and misrepresenting InnerChef in their Google campaign. We will protect our brand against any such cheap tricks by competition. It’s also unfortunate that they are focusing on such malicious advertising instead of improving their product and consumer experience.”

FreshMenu, however, has made amends by tweeting that the error was unintended and the ads have been taken off immediately. Sawheney stated that in a larger context, startups need to respect each other’s brands and copyrights.

These are nothing new in the Indian startup scenario as last week, wallet players MobiKwik and Freecharge took a dig at each other in their blogs after MobiKwik took issue with a Nielsen report that ranked MobiKwik third in digital wallet players in India after Freecharge

La.st year in May, Stayzilla and OYO rooms were involved in a similar situation wherein Stayzilla took to twitter to give OYO a hard time for violating their trademarks on Google ads, accusing it of using Stayzilla’s trademark and brand name on Google Adwords in a move to steal traffic.