"If any other Indian company would have done the same business — online or offline — they would have ended up paying a lot of taxes, so why let them go," the source said, as quoted by the Economic Times newspaper.
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According to the newspaper, the Indian government also seeks to ensure that Internet companies host Indian users' data on local servers, as it is concerned about the possibility of a data leak.
About 294 million Indian users have been registered on Facebook as of October. At the same time, its messaging platform, WhatsApp, in February said it had 200 million users in the country, making it the largest user base for both firms.