There are no hopes left for the popular short video platform TikTok to return to India. Owned by ByteDance, TikTok was banned in the country under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act last year. The short video app was used by millions of users in India.
Since the ban, several companies, Indian and global, have worked towards bringing a rival short video platform. Many Indian developers introduced rival platforms including Chingari, Miron, Moj, among others. These platforms now have millions of users on board. A new report now suggests that Twitter also explored opportunities to bring a TikTok rival.
According to a report coming from TechCrunch, the microblogging platform Twitter considered buying the popular ShareChat and place its recently launched Moj app against TikTok’s in the global market. To recall, Moj was launched soon after the ByteDance headed TikTok app was pulled down from both Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The app is no longer available in the country to download.
According to the report, Twitter was recently in talks “to acquire Indian social media startup ShareChat as the company explored ways to expand its presence in the world’s second-largest internet market and build a global rival to TikTok.”
The microblogging platform reportedly offered to buy ShareChat for $1.1 billion and had “committed an additional investment of $900 million”. “The talks did not materialize into a deal,” the report further highlighted.
Twitter reportedly “had expressed intention to take Moj, a short-form video app that ShareChat owns, to international markets and position it as a rival to Chinese app TikTok.”
Both Twitter and ShareChat declined to comment on the matter, the report stated.
