Dukaan App Removed from Play Store Amid Legal Battle with Khatabook

• The Karnataka High Court has restrained Dukaan’s co-founder Suumit Shah from infringing KhataBook’s copyright.
• The legal battle between KhataBook and Dukaan started when both the companies launched apps that operate similarly.
• The app has been downloaded over 2 million times with an active daily user base of over 59,000.

Dukaan, an app that enables instant online store for small merchants, has been removed from the Play Store after Khatabook’s app developer ADJ Utility Apps had filed a writ petition against the Dukaan app and its co-founder Suumit Shah in Karnataka High Court on September 10.

According to the story first reported by Entrackr, the Karnataka High Court has restrained Dukaan’s co-founder Suumit Shah from infringing KhataBook’s copyright over the source code of the Dukaan application.

Khatabook’s writ petition alleged that Shah used the same source code that he used for Dukaan.

The order also stops Shah from running, operating, and managing the Dukaan application on any and all online platforms including the Google Play store till the next date of hearing. 

Shah confirmed that Dukaan has been removed from the Play Store by Google on the basis of the court order though he declined to comment further on the story.

Commenting on the current status of the app already downloaded, Shah told Entrackr, "We are still trying to interpret what the Court has asked us to do and will do everything once we have clarity."

The legal battle between KhataBook and Dukaan started when both the companies launched apps Dukaan and Dukaan by Khatabook in June and August respectively.

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Growthpond Technology, the parent of Dukaan, had then sent a legal notice to Khatabook over plagiarising its logo and user interface in August. While Khatabook didn’t respond to the notice at that time, it maintained that Dukaan is a brainchild of Khatabook.

It’s worth noting Khatabook changed the name of the application from ‘Dukaan by Khatabook’ to ‘MyStore by Khatabook’ recently.

Growthpond, co-founded by Shah, was a vendor of Khatabook for the past year. It used to do custom product development and digital marketing campaigns for Khatabook. 

According to Sensor Tower data, it has been downloaded over 2 million times with an active daily user base of over 59,000. Dukaan was in advanced talks to raise $6 million in a seed round from Lightspeed and Matrix.

The company had already raised in Rs 1 crore each from the two investors, regulatory filings show. 

Dukaan enables local stores to become digital and use WhatsApp to sell their products. All a dukandaar needs to do is download the app, register their business, which takes less than a minute, and list their products.

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