No other app has enjoyed the popularity like TikTok in India. The Chinese based video-sharing app has tremendous craze among youth and teens which makes it the most downloaded app of 2020. TikTok’s popularity was on cloud nine in 2020 with a total of 500 million subscribers worldwide. In India, the app was leading with 200 million active users in 2020. It has enjoyed massive popularity leaving Facebook and Instagram behind by a big margin. India was the biggest overseas market for TikTok. For many Indians, it was the best form of entertainment and for many influencers and content creators, it was their livelihood. Many ordinary people were famous as it bought fame and success to many of its users.
But India-China stand-off and unhealthy diplomatic relations due to China’s frequent infiltration in Ladakh has resulted in a motion calling for a complete ban on Chinese products. So, the Government of India officially banned 58 apps including TikTok on 29 June 2020 citing data theft and National security as the primary reason for the ban. The ban has left many Indians dejected as it took so much hardwork to create content and reach millions of followers.
But someone’s loss is other persons gain. This is like an opportunity for Indian companies to create another video sharing app similar like TikTok and cash in and make some money and give some joy TikTokers who are badly missing their favorite app. Recently Reliance Jio came up with Jiomeet an alternative for zoom app which can accommodate 100 participants.
Campaigns like ‘Made in India’ is now been taken seriously by Indian companies. Reliance Jio by launching this new free video-conferencing application called JioMeet has directly became competitor of US-based Zoom platform. The application can be used for 1:1 video calls and hosting meetings with up to 100 participants with enterprise-grade host controls.
Following the ban’s implementation, mainstream media in India have tried to express that it is the talent of the individuals rather than the platform that made creators popular, suggesting that influencers could easily switch to other video platforms. However, this particular Chinese app may be hard to replace, according to some observers.
TikTok users love using the app for its vibrant global community. Chingari, a similar short-video app developed in India which has been suggested as a possible replacement, is comparably boring and unimaginative, commented media person Mahim Pratap Singh. “Excellence can’t be built by banning the competition,” he wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
What’s more, more international platforms, like Instagram and YouTube, will find it difficult to replace TikTok in the Indian market. Geet said many of her followers have indicated they don’t use other platforms. “Perhaps they do not have the data on their phones to watch long form videos or maybe, unlike TikTok, some apps are not available in their regional languages,” she explained.
Government should take steps and support startups and encourage them in making alterntive to every social media app and allow make in India campaign to flourish.
Yukti Kumar @ Samacharline