NEW DELHI: Big shot Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen , also one of Facebook’s directors, caused a rumpus on Twitter on Wednesday with his adverse comments on India’s decision to prohibit differential pricing of data services. He withdrew his remark and apologised later.Andreessen, who founded Netscape, the wildly-popular online browser of the 90s, tweeted during a discussion on Free Basics: “Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for Indian people for decades. Why stop now?” The 44-year-old venture capitalist later deleted the tweet. A few hours later, he also issued an apology over a series of tweets praising India’s “amazing people” and the “profoundly positive effect” its “companies” have had on the “internet and world”.But the damage had been done. His colleague Benedict Evans spent most of Wednesday responding to those who found the comment “racist” and “imperialist”. “East India Company” emerged as a sarcastic response to the earlier post and the phrase began trending on Twitter in India by Wednesday afternoon.Andreessen’s venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has its fingers in most highly-valued Silicon Valley pies such as Facebook, Twitter, AirBnB, Buzzfeed, Pinterest, and other A-listers of the tech world.Andreessen’s controversial tweet was a riposte to entrepreneur Vivek Chachra’s tweet that the Free Basics argument “some internet is better than no internet” sounded like “a justification of internet colonialism”. Facebook’s Free Basics, a zero-rated service, gives its subscribers a selection of internet services without charging them for data used to access them.Services such as these are now effectively banned in India after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) disallowed discriminatory pricing of data services on Monday. Facebook had mounted a high-voltage campaign in India in the runup to the Trai decision. Several activists, academics, and entrepreneurs found Facebook’s programme to be “anti-net-neutrality”.Nitin Pai, who runs a Bengaluru-based think-tank The Takshashila Foundation, said both Andreessen and Evans were “misinformed” on Indian history, economy, and growth goals. “The idea that the (Trai) decision prevents poor people from getting web access is just wrong. The ‘anti-colonial’ remark was out of place,” Pai told TOI on phone.Andreessen is known for his frequent “tweetstorms” – long series of several tweets — pontificating on Silicon Valley start-ups, technology, and economy, among other issues. However, a strong backlash to his Wednesday tweetstorm had him quickly delete his post and step back from the brouhaha. “I hereby withdraw from all future discussions of Indian economics or politics. Carry on,” he wrote and soon added: “And for the record, I am opposed to colonialism, in any country.”