The Indian government is urging people to use more and more Made in India applications for their day to day tasks. One of the latest examples of this is the popularisation of the Koo app, the so-called Indian alternative of the microblogging site Twitter. Koo app is getting popular in India as Twitter ban trends in the country. A new report suggests that the government of India is now testing an alternative to WhatsApp messaging application that goes by the name Sandes. Yes, you heard that right.
What is Whatsapp like Sandes app?
If you recall, the Indian government announced last year that will is developing an alternative to WhatsApp and release it soon. A new report now suggests that the messaging app that the government is developing is called Sandes. The report reveals that the app is being tested by officials in several ministries and should be ready for official release very soon.
According to a report coming from Business Standard, government officials have been using this messaging application called GIMS (Government Instant Messaging System). GIMS has now been revamped to Sandes, as confirmed by the official GIMS website, gims.gov.in. For now, Sandes can only be used by government officials, however, reports suggest that a broader rollout is expected to happen later this year. The launch timeline hasn’t been revealed yet.
The idea behind the application is to migrate government employees from mainstream social media platforms to a more secure platform with the hope that it might reduce the potential security risks.
It is suggested that the Sandes application can be used by both iOS as well as Android users. The platform reportedly supports voice and data messages just as WhatsApp. Notably, the backend of the Sandes app is handled by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) that comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
Sandes comes at the time when users are shifting from WhatsApp messaging platform after the newly updated privacy policy. Hundreds and thousands of users have flocked to other secure messaging platforms including Signal and Telegram. WhatsApp has provided May 15 as the deadline to accept the new privacy policy.
