The unfinished products of India's browser challenge
India wants an indigenous browser but the way government's browser challenge went, there might not be a good contender anytime soon.
Browsers are at the core of accessing a large part of the internet, even though there is an app for anything and everything. While the likes of Chrome and Safari rule the usage charts, startups like The Browser Company (which makes Arc) and SigmaOS have tried to innovate by creating a complex user interface that with a steep learning curves at times. Older browser companies like Opera, Brave, and Mozilla (which makes Firefox) keep trying the slants of productivity, customization, and privacy to have their userbase grow.
Why do we need an “Indian browser?”
At the crux of browser development, there is nothing nationalistic. You can make a browser from anywhere and have anyone in the world use it. So why did the Indian government create a browser challenge for developing an “Browser for India”? The competition’s site gives us the answer:
“The developed Indian Web Browser is required to have their own trust-stores, pre-loaded with CCA India Root Certificate, which is a self-signed certificate and is the top-most (root) certificate of the tree, that serves as a trust anchor.”
Other listed requirements on the site list standard features of the browser, but a trust store that pre-loads certificates from the IT Ministry Control of Certifying Authority(CCA) is Indian.
Why do we need this? You might ask.
Root certificates are signs of a secure contention through Secure Socket Layer (SSL). When you see an HTTPS on a web address, that means the connection is secure and data is encrypted between the browser and the servers. Different certificate authorities issue this certificate to domains.
In 2014, major browsers stopped recognizing CCA’s certificate as trusted because there were fraudulent certificates through the National Informatics Centre (NIC) —which provides technology solutions to the government — to Google domains.
The government is possibly pushing on this front for contingency planning for dire situations, such as the world cutting off India from the global internet.
“In a situation where our access to the Internet globally may get cut off, to have it completely operational within the country… Today’s efforts will be key in strengthening the resilience of the Internet within the country,” IT Secretary S. Krishnan said during the event, according to The Hindu.
If an Indian authority owns issuing certificates, supported by browsers, it means the authority could decide if a website is secure or not. It can also choose to issue certificates even when other certificate providers might not.
All this certificate stuff is fine, but what about other browser stuff?
For an average user, the certificate might not matter much unless they see a warning about a site being not secure. They would want a functioning browser that is fast and maybe has some extra features.
For such early stage browsers, it is hard to do a direct comparision with established players. We are going to take a look at the top features describes on the websites of three winners of the Indian government’s browser challenge:
Zoho’s Ulaa browser: This browser claims to be a centric browser with no tracking, geographical data isolation, different modes with website blockers, smart tab management, notes, and integration with Zoho’s own tools.
Ping Browser: Support for the Hindi language, digital document signature, parental controls, and “AI integrated features” (not sure what that means).
Bharat Web Navigator: Integrated chatbots, document signing tool, and crypto asset management tools.
Most of these features are nice to have rather and don’t feel that they would attract users right away.
This is not a bad thing, but browsers do need to build a scalable and fast product that is reliable.
Reliability is the factor where these entrants can falter.
A security researcher who goes by @DotSlashTX on X wrote a long thread where he accused Ping of being a wrapper of Brave browser with a few additional features. He added in the thread that Ping’s alleged Brave forking might be violating some copyright claims, too.
Another researcher pointed out that the nomneclature used in Ping’s Linux install file is amateurish and could break system-level aliases.
Uday Bansal, one of the founders of Ping Browser, acknowledged in a post that the company built on top of the Brave browser. He mentioned that the submission for the Indian browser challenge was different than the enterprise browser the company advertises on the website.
He goes on to say that the browser submitted for the challenge had digital document signing through crypto token, parental control features (the security researcher called this out as just an extension), and an AI summerizer. Bansal said that there were some mishaps in terms of packaging certain submission elements of the browsers.
“On behalf of my team, I sincerely apologise for the oversight regarding repackaging certain of the submission's elements - I truly understand how this looks from the community's perspective,” he said.
Despite this clarification, it is not a good look for a new browser.
There are questions around Bharat Web Navigator’s (BWN) features, too. A software engineer pointed out on X that some of the features marketed by the browser are just demo pages. Plus, the company used older versions of Chromium, which could result in security mishaps if released for all users.
The company behind this browser, Anja, is primarily a crypto consultancy building various solutions. As some of the requirements for the browser challenge included adding “web3 content” support, the company possibly took a punt.
The company told MoneyControl that it stopped the development of the browser in April 2024 while awaiting the results.
India’s IT ministry is looking into both Ping and BWN, according to the report.
Did we really get a desi Google Chrome competitor?
The bigger question is, what’s the point of the whole rigmarole? If the companies developed the browser just for the challenge and are not going to put out new versions to really compete with existing browsers, the whole exercise was a failed one.
As some of the startups like The Browser Company have experienced in recent times, building a unique browser, getting users, keeping them as users, and scaling that userbase is very challenging.
The doubts raised by various folks about the two runner-ups and their approach to browser development don’t give a lot of confidence about their vision to develop and maintain browsers for consumers.
Zoho, which has a multibillion-dollar valuation, can possibly put resources behind its new browser. However, it will also face challenges in scaling the product. The browser has strong integration with Zoho products, so some of its customers might be incentivized to use it. The company will have to put a lot of effort into brand-building around the browser and getting mindshare of users to have them switch away from Chrome, Safari, or Firefox.
The Indian government had started programs like an app challenge, which went nowhere beyond the first edition
At the announcement of the browser challenge winners, the IT Minister made a point of pushing India towards a product building nation. But that would require long-term challenges, evaluation, trust building, and support. The browser challenge didn’t possibly set a right example in that direction.