India just banned Telegram for a week. The 150 million users who noticed are mostly on VPNs now.

India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology invoked Section 69A of the IT Act on June 16 to impose a nationwide Telegram block through June 22, citing organised cheating rackets selling fake exam papers ahead of the NEET-UG medical entrance re-test. Both Google and Apple were ordered to de-list the app from Indian stores for the duration. The ban's practical impact has been limited: Proton VPN reported a 150% spike in hourly registrations in India within hours, and Google Trends searches for 'VPN for Telegram' reached peak index within 48 hours. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov says leaks simply shifted to other platforms. India is Telegram's largest market with an estimated 354 million monthly active users, making the collateral damage substantial and the enforcement effectively porous. The real business implication is the precedent: India has demonstrated willingness to impose whole-platform bans under existing law, which any digital platform serving Indian users at scale needs to treat as a live operational risk rather than a theoretical one.