Social-Media
Indian video sharing apps are becoming increasingly popular with TikTok ban
(Reuters) Indian Tech and entertainment businesses are seeking to take advantage of sudden opportunities stemming from a government ban on Chinese owned apps including the wildly popular TikTok.
In what was described as a "digital strike" by the country 's technology minister against China, India this week outlawed 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok and Tencent's WeChat.
This was followed by a confrontation with China at a disputed border point in the Himalayas that killed 20 Indian soldiers.
With 200 million Indian users TikTok was a growing force on the social media scene and the ban left the supporters scrambling for options with a simple user interface, background music options and various special effects.
In two days after India banned Chinese applications, a company founder Mayank Bhangadia told Reuters, Roposo, an Indian social media video sharing application similar to TikTok, has saw the user base jump 22 million.
I've been sleeping for over five hours in recent days and it's the same for the whole team, said Bhangadia. The load is so high and we just make it as smooth as possible to experience.
Roposo has over 80 million downloads on Android and Bhangadia is expecting 100 million downloads in just a few days. Before the ban Roposo 's installation on Android devices, which comprise almost 500 million Indian smartphones, was approximately 50 million.
Based in Bangaluru's South Indian technology hub, the company currently has only 200 employees, but plans to recruit up to 10,000 people over the next 2 years and can take the app worldwide, Bhangadia said.
Other home-generated alternatives like Chingari and Mitron, like Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's call for "atma-nirbhar" or independent India, are also favoring users with many taking social media.
We must create our own ecosystem and every country has done that, said one Minister of the Government. It is our Atma-nirbhar programme.
New players jump to the fray as well. In the next two months, Rajneel Kumar, Product Manager for the Zee5 digital unit, will be launching an ad-supported, short-video-platform called HiPi.
He hoped former TikTok users to find a place in Hipi to enjoy the contents they enjoyed.
Source: Reuters Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
