TikTok planning India data centre

Facing pressure from the Indian government to store data within India’s borders, Beijing-based ByteDance, that owns the popular short video-sharing app TikTok, said it was planning to set up a data centre in India.

"As testimony to ByteDance's recognition of India's efforts to frame a new data protection legislation, we are taking a significant step towards establishing a data centre in India," said the startup, which also owns the social media platform Helo. "We are now in the process of examining options for safe, secure and reliable services for our Indian users within Indian borders," it said.

It may take ByteDance 6-18 months to set up the data centre at a cost of USD100 million. The investment will be part of the company's commitment to invest USD1 billion in India over three years.

With over 200 million users, India is the biggest market for TikTok, where it has also courted several controversies over the past few months.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has sought response from operators of TikTok and Helo on a set of questions, which include whether it was considering storing data in India, and the measures they were taking to protect users below 18 years from getting exposed to potentially dangerous content.

The social media platforms must reply or face a ban.

"India is one of our strongest markets and we are happy to be part of the mainframe of Digital India in 15 Indian languages," ByteDance said.

"Since the launch of our platforms in India, we have stored our Indian users' data at industry-leading third-party data centres in the US and Singapore”.