In a small village in Churu, Rajasthan, 33-year-old Babu Pooniawalla wages a worldwide struggle towards pretend mortgage apps from a modest setup with a patchy 4G community. What started as a curious investigation in June 2023 has reworked right into a relentless mission, with Pooniawalla figuring out 22,000 fraudulent apps and facilitating the removing of 17,000 from Google Play and Apple App Retailer as of as we speak. His journey—from a pc science graduate to a digital vigilante—highlights a David-versus-Goliath battle towards a sprawling rip-off ecosystem that preys on the susceptible. He, alongside along with his workforce in Bengaluru, is engaged on an app and web site that determine and flag pretend apps.
Pooniawalla’s adolescence was formed by educational rigour. A powerful pupil, he cracked the JEE examination, securing admission to NIT Rourkela in 2009 to review Laptop Science.
“I didn’t know what I needed to do. I assumed I ought to take up a authorities job. However my mother and father motivated me to take up laptop science engineering,” he says. After graduating, he dove into the startup world, creating cell apps for corporations like Kore.ai, Entrip, and Slack, specializing in messaging options. His profession took him to the company sector for two-and-a-half years earlier than he shifted to the Delhi NCR area, becoming a member of a health-based startup in 2017 that related sufferers to docs on a digital platform. He then joined Hike Messenger, enhancing the product’s digicam options.
By 2018, Pooniawalla was a part of the preliminary engineering workforce at IND Cash, a fintech startup in Gurgaon, the place he developed monetary cell apps. His curiosity in regards to the fintech area grew, main him to seek the advice of for wealth and funding companies, together with Wealthzi, Foundation and Advisorkhoj, till mid-2024. However a darker aspect of the app ecosystem quickly captured his consideration.
In 2023, whereas creating apps for the Apple App Retailer, Pooniawalla stumbled upon a disturbing pattern: pretend mortgage apps. “I heard about these pretend mortgage apps that many customers had been falling prey to. It was regressive—regardless of the rigorous app retailer publishing course of, pretend mortgage apps had been thriving,” he says. His analysis revealed a grim actuality. Many apps bore unfamiliar names, lacked credible groups, and operated underneath pretend developer accounts.
A tweet he posted in regards to the situation gained traction, however the stakes grew to become private when he discovered of a person in Kerala who died by suicide after taking a mortgage from a flagged app.
“Had it been eliminated, he would possibly nonetheless be alive,” Pooniawalla says. His findings had been staggering. In July 2023, 27 of India’s high 200 most-downloaded apps—15%—had been pretend. In Google India’s finance class, 32 out of 200 apps confirmed comparable crimson flags: shady names, doubtful logos, and no credible data. A few of the pretend mortgage apps embody RupeeFlow, Grasp Kash, Leaf Money, EE-Money, MM9 Wealth, and Verifile IND, amongst others. “These apps had been working advertisements, amassing thousands and thousands of downloads in simply three to 4 months,” he says. Mortgage apps grew to become his main focus, revealing a cat-and-mouse sport with scammers throughout India, Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, and the Philippines.
What began as a passion was a ardour. “It angered me—why was no one holding Google and Apple accountable?” he asks. Pooniawalla’s efforts uncovered a systemic situation. Scammers exploited loopholes, typically misusing company identities to make their apps seem respectable. “Scammers have deeper pockets than VC-funded fintechs. Pretend mortgage apps are a nightmare for real lenders, fuelling synthetic competitors within the digital area, growing buyer acquisition prices, and stealing actual customers,” he says.
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Over two years, he flagged 22,000 apps—15,000 within the final 12 months alone—principally mortgage and buying and selling scams. Google eliminated 12,000, and Apple 5,000, however 5,000 stay energetic. “They hold resurfacing. Why aren’t they fixing this?” he asks. His work hasn’t gone unnoticed by scammers. Some have additionally reached out through LinkedIn and Twitter, providing bribes to cease him from exposing their apps. “In Indonesia, scammers struggled as I disrupted their operations inside minutes of them publishing pretend mortgage apps on-line. Additionally they ordered me to not take down these apps,” says Pooniawalla.
Nonetheless, he states that they tailored, discovering new methods to take advantage of methods by means of UPI, PDF readers, SMS instruments, amongst others. Regardless of the challenges, Pooniawalla stays motivated. “I see the impact—one or two apps come up often now. However I’ll take down every considered one of these pretend apps,” he says. Final week alone, he flagged 500 apps, with 400 eliminated.
In mid-2024, Pooniawalla left consulting to construct options along with his different companions. He’s creating a instrument akin to Truecaller, set to launch subsequent month, that analyses app hyperlinks in real-time to detect fraud. “I’m attempting to automate it—determine 10,000 apps a day utilizing AI to identify scammer patterns,” he explains. His focus now consists of data-stealing scams like PDF readers, unlawful betting apps, pretend buying and selling apps impersonating SEBI-registered inventory brokers, crypto scams, pretend relationship and video name apps, and data-stealing apps that concentrate on Indian shoppers regardless of authorized restrictions.
Reflecting on the broader affect, Pooniawalla notes the human toll. “Shoppers are dropping belief. The susceptible are pushed to suicidal ideas,” he says. He urges Google and Apple to behave: “It’s 2025—5 years since these scams peaked. They should acknowledge the issue and clear up it. It’s time for a collaboration the place we should always work collectively to repair this. It’s Covid-19 in digital type .” His message to victims is empathetic: “Don’t argue with scammers. Report them, and don’t really feel you’re alone.”
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From Churu, Pooniawalla’s struggle spans 9 nations, undeterred by language boundaries or poor connectivity. “The language of scammers is similar worldwide,” he says.