YouTube vs TikTok, Sonam Wangchuk’s call for the ban on Chinese products, and the government’s ban on Chinese apps have brought in an opportunity for Indian app makers to make their presence felt and counted for.
As millions of TikTok users hunt for alternatives to the Chinese app now banned in India, home-grown companies have seen a massive surge in downloads over the past week. Some app makers even draw parallels with demonetisation that changed the country’s fintech industry.
TikTok had over 20 crore users in India, most of them in the 16-24 age bracket. Several entrepreneurs are now batting to grab the attention of these TikTok users.
The video-sharing platform, Roposo, saw a sharp jump in the number of downloads over the past few weeks. “There has been a massive increase in the number of installs in the last three weeks. The number of downloads has jumped from 7 lakh a day to 1 crore a day,” co-founder Mayank Bhangadia told DH. He added that this “indeed is a turning point for entrepreneurs/developers in India”.
Similarly, the Chingari app saw 6 lakh per-hour installs within hours of India banning TikTok and 58 other Chinese applications on June 29. Hours before the ban, Mahindra Group chief Anand Mahindra had lauded Chingari’s efforts. “I hadn’t ever downloaded TikTok but I have just downloaded Chingari... More power to you…,” he tweeted.
“Yes, it is a watershed moment for us. We got an initial traction from Sonam Wangchuk’s video appealing users to use Made-in-India apps and marketing. But we didn’t see this happening,” Sumit Ghosh, co-founder of Chingari, a video-sharing platform, told DH.
“This is unusual and no one in India has seen such a surge,” said Bhangadia.
Bolo Indya co-founder Varun Saxena said there was a huge jump in the number of users in the first 24 hours of the ban. “We saw over 2.5 lakh installs, with 87% of these signing up and creating videos. At least 1.27 crore videos were created in June.”
Innovation and upgradation
The unanticipated spike in downloads has forced many to speed up innovation, upgrade user interface and work nearly 24/7. “There was downtime, right after the ban was announced. It took a couple of hours to fix the glitch and the app was back up to full potential,” said Ghosh, recalling how the Chingari team burned the midnight oil to fix the downtime.
Though Innovation is key to any product’s success, the challenge lies in innovating faster, said Bhangadia. Roposo, which was launched in November 2014, and had 50 million downloads earlier in June, ended the month with total downloads of over 65 million. “This is a fast-changing space and one has to constantly innovate. Our users are smart. So, we also have to innovate quite fast,” Bhangadia said.
The ban has also changed the company's growth strategies. Ghosh said Chingari had planned to raise capital, upgrade products slowly as they got funds. “But now, we're looking at large funding opportunities. The aim is to have 200 million influencers on our platform in two months,” Ghosh said. Currently, the app has about 11 million users on its Android platform.
Similarly, Bhangadia said that the sky’s the limit and Roposo aims to be in most of the smartphones in India.