Tik Tok was one of the biggest successes in terms of an entertainment app, especially in India.
With more than 200 million active users only from India spending 2.75 billion hours watching videos on Tik Tok, its popularity was unparalleled.
It gave a platform to artists and creative people to come up and showcase their talent on this platform to gain short term popularity as an influencer.
In fact, it became the only source of livelihood for many who used this platform to create their fan base and established themselves as influencers.
Out of every 100 influencers on Tik Tok, 1 got an opportunity of paid partnerships with brands.
It opened up the doors and helped people explore the arts and creativity as a successful career option.
But due to security and political relations with China, the app was banned in India in October 2020.
This strategic decision by the Government led to the creation of a huge vacuum in the digital space.
Many people lost their source of income, entertainment, and a go-to platform for inspiration.
This very decision has drastically affected short video creation and the industry as a whole. As per a study, the users are spending less than 1.3 billion hours post the ban on Tik Tok in India in comparison to 2.75 billion in June.
This drastic fall of more than 50% has created a lot of vacuum in the short videos market but at the same time encouraged new startups to come up with an alternative solution to the market.
This gap created led to the creation of new ideas and ventures to come up which were encouraged and backed by venture capitalists and angel investors.
A few of these startup stories have been shared below, who have taken a step forward to bridge this gap. They are positively supporting and promoting a lot of creative talents from the roots of India.
Moj
Similar to the concept of TikTok, the founders of ShareChat came up with the idea of Moj as soon as TikTok was banned in India.
This application provides a similar platform for local artists to showcase their talent and develop their own fan base over the app.
The idea is to create and promote entertaining content in the form of short videos. Currently, it has over 50 million downloads and the apps are gradually becoming popular among tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
With time and response from the audience, the platform is introducing new and interesting features to capturing the attention and, increase the average time spent by the user over the platform. These features include filters on the camera, stickers, gifs, music to add to the entertainment of the users.
Roposo
Started by the alumni of IIT Delhi, Roposo was a platform created for people who are interested in fashion to share images and videos among a group of people having similar interests.
This platform was then transformed into an inclusive platform, where music, dance, entertainment, and all sorts of entertaining topics were discussed in the form of short videos.
With the ban of TikTok, it gave a boost to this platform, and it became the top trending application on google store.
The new user base of more than 35 million was witnessed with more than 2 billion short video viewership per day.
This is becoming very popular among people as it also offers content in more than 12 Regional languages of India, thus making it more inclusive.
Josh
This platform is similar to other social media platforms where you can enjoy the funniest and viral videos over the internet.
This application offers easy to share options and helps to create your own videos and upload them here.
It offers interesting features, stickers, and editing options to create amazing videos and upload them over the platform.
After the ban of TikTok and other Chinese apps, Josh became very popular among the audience catering to traffic across all Indian languages as possible.
These are a few startup initiatives undertaken to supplement the gap created by the ban on Chinese apps like TikTok. More positive initiatives are coming up hence, we can hope for a better and growing scope for the small video space in the digital industry.
But, did you know what apart from the other mentioned reasons made TIKTOK what we can’t forget even today. Well, it is the touch of regional language that made it so special.
When other platforms in today’s time allow conversation in just English, many people who are not familiar with the language felt awkward. And the founders of TikTok tapped this gap by creating a platform like this.
But now when we in India do not have access to this application any more, why don’t you try the latest AI-based technology launched by Bharat keyboard. This is none other than the Manglish Keyboard Apk
Yes, you heard it right! Malayalam typing keyboard is one such innovation which allows users to chat and interact with each other in their very own mother tongue.
No matter if you don’t know Malayalam, this keyboard provides Manglish transliterations for you. You can type your message in English and the user at another end will receive it in the Malayalam language.
That’s the beauty of this Malayalam keyboard. You can use it across all the apps installed in your android phone and download it without any future upgrades through play store.
