Singapore is pissed + Twitter India’s new appointment
India’s ban on Free Fire triggers a diplomatic row; the social networking firm may have finally found the right public policy chief.
25 February, 2022•9 min
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25 February, 2022•9 min
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Editor's note: Harveen here. It seems that the Indian government may have to explain a knee-jerk regulatory decision it took earlier this month. On 14 February, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY), citing security concerns, banned 54 apps it believed to be of Chinese origin. And the most popular (and strangest) candidate in this list was the gaming app Garena Free Fire. A little background here. Garena Free Fire is one of the most popular games across the world, owned by the Singapore-based and New York-listed consumer internet company Sea Ltd. Sea was founded in 2009 by Singaporean billionaires Forrest Li, Gang Ye and David Chen. All three were born in China and left the country at different (and early) stages of their lives. (This profile by Bloomberg on how Singapore nurtured the trio into becoming billionaires is a good read.) Now as the Indian ban on Garena Free Fire got announced this month, troubles started for Sea. Its stock tanked and erased $16 billion in market value in a single day. Investors panicked about the company’s future, given the …
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