Late on Monday night, the Indian government banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, Clash of Kings, Helo, Shareit, Shein. The apps will be banned as they are "engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of state and public order."
Subsequently, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has invoked its power under section 69A of the Indian Information Technology Act, 2000, which specifies "Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public".
The move comes days after twenty Indian Army personnel, including a colonel, were killed in clashes with Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh on Monday night, the biggest military confrontation between India and China in over five decades.
One of these apps received the most attention - TikTok.
The short, video-streaming app owned by ByteDance had the largest user-base in India, with 119.3 million users, and very popular for transcending from just the large, mostly-elite urban user base.
With the popular app now gone, here's some Indian alternatives which are very similar to TikTok.
Chingari
Touted as the 'desi' choice to Tiktok, the app was reportedly developed by an IT professional of Chhattisgarh and developers from Odisha and Karnataka. Up until 28th June, it was rapidly gaining popularity and had witnessed nearly 2.5 million downloads.
Chingari's chief of product, Sumit Ghosh, hailing from Bhilai in Chattisgarh, told Times of India that it took him around two years to develop this mobile application. The App was developed keeping in view the requirements and demands of Indian users. The App was released officially on Google Play store two years ago in November, 2018.
Roposo
Roposo, is an Indian video-sharing social media platform, owned by Glance InMobi Pte. Ltd, with a registered office at Gurugram, Haryana. The app offers a TV-like browsing experience with user-generated content on its channels. Users can also use editing tools on the platform and upload their content.
The app lets the users add voice-overs and music to their homemade videos and photos – personalising the whole experience. Interest based channels give the users a platform to showcase their talents and connect with an audience that resonates their thoughts and opinions, reported ET Brand Equity.
WeLike
WeLike is a social media and interactive platform where users can share their talents. The app also gives the youth a chance to share their own homemade content like photos, videos, and articles and run some fun contests to reward the users.
"WeLike aims to build an interest-based community and provide a platform for people to become famous. We aim to bring in people with similar interests to discuss, debate and share views and ideas to make our society more positive”, said Welike’s India Operations Director Siddharth Venkataraman.
YoPlay
YoPlay app which describes itself as a one-tap to download videos to your mobile and share any of video with your friends on social networks including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter, has a registered address of Mumbai in India, already has 10,000+ downloads.
The app also lets you "easily edit your videos with millions of free music clips and sounds. We create featured music playlists for you with the hottest tracks in every genre, including hip hop, edm, pop, rock, rap, country, and more."
Bolo Indya
Bolo Indya which brands itself as 'Tik Tik India,' describes itself as "an Indian video app, to create and share short videos in regional languages of India- Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi and Odia."
It lets you "download and share videos to get popular for your knowledge. Videos are created by users across interest areas like News, GK, Relationships, Health, English Learning, Entertainment, Travel, Food and Cooking, Motivation, Exams, Career, Shopping, Technology and any area of passion and interest. Video creators can also earn royalty for the quality videos they create which get popular on Bolo Indya."
Bolo Indya also says that it "has the aim to empower each and every Indian with a platform to voice the opinion, share the experience, and become internet influencers."
The app is owned by SynergyByte Media Pvt Ltd, and has an address of Gurugram, Haryana.
If you're looking for alternatives to other apps like Shein, Camscanner etc, we've also got you covered.
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