TikTok switch after India bans Chinese apps
Millions of Indians have joined home-grown social media platforms since New Delhi banned a slew of Chinese apps, including TikTok, amid growing tensions between the neighbours, industry officials said on Thursday.
The ban comes as India steps up economic pressure on China after a border battle in June in which 20 Indian soldiers died.
The 59 banned apps include video-sharing giant TikTok, Helo and Likee, with authorities accusing them of activities “prejudicial” to the “sovereignty and integrity of India”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has a huge social media profile, threw his weight behind the campaign by closing his account on China’s Weibo platform on Wednesday.
His photograph and 115 posts made over the past five years were deleted at the request of Indian authorities, the Chinese company said.
India’s 1.3 billion population is a key market for global internet players and home-grown app platforms ShareChat and Roposo said they had seen a huge surge in new users since Monday’s ban on their Chinese rivals.
ShareChat said its video platform had clocked 15 million new downloads — sometimes at a rate of 500,000 every 30 minutes — in the 48 hours after the ban.
It now had at least 150 million registered users, it said.
“We welcome the move from the government against platforms that have had serious privacy, cybersecurity and national security risks,” Berges Malu, public policy director for ShareChat, said.
About 10 million new subscribers had joined the Roposo video app, Naveen Tewari, CEO of owners InMobi, said, bringing its user base to 75 million.
About 120 million Indians were TikTok users before the ban.
Tewari said the ban would give local platforms the chance to become the world’s fourth major tech hub alongside the US, Russia and China.
The Indian industry has long been pressing for action against Chinese apps which dominate the market, with ShareChat and Inmobi calling for the platforms to follow Indian laws and values.
There are also fears foreign apps could influence domestic affairs in areas such as politics.
Observers say retaining the new followers will be the main challenge for the Indian upstarts, which will now have to invest in staff and content to keep audiences.
Arvind Gupta, founder and head of the DigitalIndia Foundation, said Indian firms also had to answer “the strategic concerns around privacy and data security”.