The Indian 'Parler' is here. And it's called Tooter. And, Narendra Modi has a verified profile here.

Say hello to Sadhguru, who's profile still says 'tweets'. But interesting that they've gone with an "influencer-first, users will follow" strategy.

Amit Shah is also on Tooter.

Others include Kiran Bedi, Rajnath Singh, Anand Ranganathan. The BJP has an official verified account + its Telangana unit. Besides actors Pawan Kalyan & Mahesh Babu.

Other verified handles include R Vaidyanathan, Subramanian Swamy, PMO India. Also, Vivekananda India Foundation

When you sign up, and I did, it automatically follows R Vaidyanathan (rvaidya2000), Nanda (who is the CEO of Tooter Pvt Ltd) and a verified handle called news. Interesting.

Some more names — Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Irani, Yogi Adityanath.

Abhishek Bachchan, Virat Kohli.

At this stage it just looks like they've parked these IDs with a verified handle, and automatically posting tweets into this platform. Same with Modiji's handle too.

Growth hack

There seems to be a concerted push on right-wing groups on encrypted messaging platforms to boost PM Modi's following on Tooter. It was 15 a few days ago, it's 158 now. But no clue who's behind this.

Incorporated in Aug 2020, Tooter Pvt Ltd is based out of SriCity, Khammam.

Hmmm. It offers an upgrade to TooterPRO. ₹1000 per year.

A 'PRO' account has a yellow rim on the DP. For instance, an account called Hindu Genocide is a PRO account.

Once you upgrade to PRO, you get to create groups, schedule posts and so on. Hmmm.

The 'news' handle on Tooter *only* posts stories from Swarajya. Interesting.

Nearly all popular actors, actresses, and cricketers (mostly from Twitter, with the same DP no less) are also listed on the platform. And institutions like the Indian Army, Navy, ISRO and so on.

Seems like a Twitter feed wrapped in a different platform. That's pretty much that.