“Mitron TV was downloaded by millions of Indian users, even before the ban on Chinese apps”
Mitron TV was launched and then removed from Play Store and again listed back. It has emerged as one of the most popular Indian alternatives to Tiktok. The app allows users to reimagine digital entertainment and engagement which is designed for people to showcase their innovative videos online with the theme of light humour. You can create, edit and share your videos as well as browse through a library of top videos across the globe. By crossing 25 million downloads, early last month, Mitron TV app has become one of the most downloaded apps in India during the last two months with 40 million video views per hour. The app has been rapidly enhancing the product with several improvements for the users including an updated video upload process, enhanced audio library, a feature that enables users to flag any inappropriate content easily. Our correspondent Vivek Singh Chauhan spoke to the Co-founder cum CEO of Mitron TV, Shivank Agarwal, to know how the ban on Chinese apps, including Tiktok, increased its growth prospects, expansion plans etc. Here is the edited excerpt of the interaction.
What has been Mitron TV’S journey so far? Personally, I always had a desire to have an Indian social media platform which abides by Indian community guidelines. It pained me to see so many videos of hate and violence on different international platforms, with no respect for the law of the land. Additionally, our thought process has always been that Indian consumers should be served by an Indian platform and Indian data should always be secured on Indian servers.
My co-founder Anish Khandelwal and I spent a lot of time brainstorming on our startup idea before we decided to build Mitron TV. Our mission is to build a shortform video app that reimagines digital engagement and entertainment while being sensitive to the users in our market and compliant with our local laws.
With so many social media apps like Mitron TV coming up, what is unique about your app and how do you advertise it? As a company based in India, we are very respectful of the nature of content that appears on our platform and we show a high degree of sensitivity to local cultural norms and laws. We are seeing amazing traction with millions of downloads on a daily basis. We believe our product is good and it is getting better fast and our focus is on building a world-class product and that’s what will ultimately determine the winner.
Has a ban on Tiktok changed any industry scenario? What kind of changes Mitron TV intends to make to the app to leverage the market opportunity that is now available? We launched Mitron TV well before the unprecedented ban on Chinese apps. Immediately after the ban on Chinese apps, Mitron TV traffic went up 11-fold. Within 10 days of the ban, more than 4.2 billion videos were viewed on Mitron TV which is beyond all expectations we had. Earlier this week, Earlier this month, our downloads crossed 25 million (2.5 crores) and the momentum is strong. Our goal is to build Mitron TV as a short-form video app that reimagines digital entertainment and engagement while respecting the local cultural norms and regulatory framework. Mitron TV app was downloaded by millions of Indian users, even before the ban on Chinese apps, confirming our belief that users wanted an alternative to the Chinese apps.
How do you ensure data privacy and data security? We are completely aligned towards data privacy and security and have taken several measures to make sure that it is reflected in our product. We ensure that all our users’ data is stored on Indian servers and are accessible only by Mitron TV servers running on Indian data centres. Users have control of their data and can choose to delete any content uploaded by them. Any user specific interaction is performed with a signed token which is issued and verified by our servers so that user behaviour cannot be mimicked.
We have done VAPT (Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing) for all the existing APIS (data exchange) and made it as part of the process for any new development. Additionally, we are building privacy/visibility control for users where they will be able to control the visibility (public/private/friends) of their videos.
What are the long term plans of Mitron TV? Mitron TV team has been superagile and the product is being improved rapidly with 8 releases in the last 6 weeks. Further improvements planned include optimization to handle media at scale, a recommendation engine for bubbling up good videos, search capability, improved video editing tools, real-time feedback in search rankings and personalization.
Can you share some metrics of the app and the per cent increase of the same? We crossed 25 million downloads earlier this month. Users are viewing 40 million videos per hour on Mitron.
Can you shed light on the behaviour of the users who use the app? India has over 500 to 600 million Internet users, of which more than 150 million are new users who came online during the last 1-2 years. Most of these users engage in social media platforms like Whatsapp, Tiktok, Facebook, Youtube etc. On average, Indians spend 2.4 hours a day on social media apps.
What are your thoughts on the future of social video apps? Mobile internet usage is rising rapidly, driven by Social Media and Entertainment apps. The rapid increase in the usage of social media and entertainment apps is driven by access to cheaper smartphones and low-cost data plans. During the current COVID lockdown, the usage of such apps is only rising, with people staying at home and looking for digital entertainment.
vivek@mymobile.co.in