Zorro and the ghosts of anonymity past

Why read this story?

Editor's note: Zorro is coming. Named after American pulp writer Johnston McCulley’s vigilante, it’s a social network positioned as the ultimate in anonymous online communities for the Indian diaspora. “Wear a mask & build your own private identity,” says its home page, where you can join the waiting list. Zorro has already taken the limelight. Not because of its pitch or its three founders—Jasveer Singh, Deepak Kumar and Abhishek Asthana (who goes by the popular handle “@GabbbarSingh” on Twitter)—who are interesting in their own right, but because it is backed by some of the heavyweights of the Indian startup community, with a total of four venture capital investors and 36 startup founders. Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, Ritesh Agarwal of OYO, Ashish Hemrajani of BookMyShow, Kunal Shah of CRED, Ashneer Grover of BharatPe, Vikalp Sahani of Goibibo, Gaurav Gupta of Zomato and so on.  There are few success stories in the social media business in India. Mostly clones of foreign social networks (read: TikTok). So, when the bigwigs of the startup ecosystem suddenly seem interested in a local social network, one sits …