Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who fought a bitter war with Google recently, took to Twitter on Monday and urged Indian users to move to encrypted Signal app and shun WhatsApp.
"They say market has power. We are the largest market. Here in India, WhatsApp/Facebook are abusing their monopoly & taking away millions of users' privacy for granted. We should move on to @signalapp NOW. It is up to us to become victim or reject such moves," Sharma said in a tweet.
Hike CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal has also said that Telegram and Signal are good options.
WhatsApp is asking its users to either give their consent to sharing data with Facebook or lose their accounts after February 8.
WhatsApp users in India and elsewhere who wish to join either Telegram, which has raced to cross 500 million users globally, or Signal, which is yet to reveal official user numbers, are currently confused as to which app to choose.