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Mouthshut.com is a consumer review and rating platform founded in 2000 by Faisal Farooqui. The company hosts reviews and ratings written by users, on more than 800,000 products and services available in India. In 2012, the company actively petitioned against Section 66A of the Indian IT Act and the Intermediary Guideline Rules, leading to their eventual scrapping and reading down by the Supreme Court of India. The site has reviews across 400+ categories.

History

In 1998, while attending State University of New York at Binghamton, Faisal Farooqui conceived the idea of a review website. It was during a class when he recognized the significance of customer feedback for business growth.

He went back to India and launched MouthShut.com in late 2000. The platform was initially marketed to a curated email list of 1800 individuals, which included contacts of the initial employees, staff, friends, and relatives of the company.

Later, Farooqui utilized the rear space of auto rickshaws as a medium to promote the website. During the year 2001, his team implemented the Dial-the-CEO option on the website, which enabled users to provide direct feedback.

Video reviews on products and services were enabled on the platform in December 2006.

In May 2007, Farooqui expanded the video reviews to a full-fledge video review platform Dekhona.com.

In December 2008, the platform introduced mobile reviews that could be posted via an SMS shortcode.

The review website transitioned from a reviews-only platform to a buying guide-providing portal in July 2012.

Products

In May 2011, MouthShut.com launched Dealface.com, a website that provides sales deals across industry segments. This was later integrated with Mouthshut.com.

In May 2014, the company launched its mobile application on Android and iOS.

Awards and recognition

In 2006, MouthShut was awarded the Manthan Award for Best Youth Website by Govt. of India.

MouthShut.com was awarded the Best Portal of the Year-Gold award at the first edition of India Digital Media Awards.

MouthShut CEO Faisal Farooqui has been credited with introducing Web 2.0 concepts in India.

Mouthshut.com and freedom of speech

To protect its review writers from threats from brands, in its filings with the Supreme Court of India, Mouthshut stated that it will never reveal the identity of any of its review writers unless ordered by a court of competent jurisdiction. On April 29, 2013, MouthShut.com filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India to nullify India's Information Technology Rules 2011. MouthShut.com argued that as a consequence of this law would be the delegation of essential executive function to private parties like MouthShut.com to censor and restrict free speech of citizens or else face legal challenge for user's content. The verdict was in favor of Mouthshut.com and Sec. 66A was repealed along with the reading down of IT Rules and intermediary guidelines.

Controversies

In February 2014, MouthShut was blocked by Bangalore-based ISP ACT Internet company and its Hyderabad-based subsidiary Beam Fiber, without furnishing the reason. The company then escalated the issue with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). Later, the website was unblocked by the two ISPs.

In December 2017, the company blocked 80,000 fake user profiles to prevent spammers who may potentially post fake reviews.

In March 2018, MouthShut.com deleted 4,100 profiles of users who were posting fake reviews of products and services.

References

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34. "The Irony of a Name". Open The Magazine. 2013-06-13. Retrieved 2023-04-14.

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