Capitalising on the new-found inclination for ‘swadeshi’ apps, a Thiruvananthapuram-based engineering student has joined the bandwagon of home-developed alternatives for TikTok, a popular Chinese video application that was banned along with 58 other apps.

Ashish Sajan, a third-year BTech Information Technology (IT) student of the University College of Engineering, Karyavattom, has developed ‘Tik Tik – Made in India’ that has the prime features of the original app and promises to build on them to ensure easy user interface. The application has notched over 1.5 lakh downloads within a week of its launch.

Coding enthusiast

The 22-year-old Pongumoodu native caught the mobile app-development bug quite early after he developed a fascination for coding during his Class 12 days.

Ashish Sajan, a BTech student who developed Tik Tik app.  

“I was hooked to developing web-based applications and designing websites. Later, this saw a natural progression to mobile applications after I managed to learn the ropes of Android Studio.” He said he managed to learn these through YouTube and other online sources. Besides developing social networking applications, Ashish also created diverse software meant for staff management, billing and estimate preparation in companies, including restaurants and construction firms. He developed nearly 50 applications, half of which were launched through Google Play Store. For developing Tik Tik, he integrated many of his earlier applications to assimilate features including chat, video streaming and recording, and audio mixing.

New additions

He has now set his sights on introducing new additions. An ardent advocate of utilising online resources to remain in tune with evolving technologies, Ashish hopes to enter the information technology industry which, he feels, might no longer remain the same in the post-COVID-19 scenario.