World’s most valued startup ByteDance’s Indian operation is suddenly finding itself in a tough spot. The trouble for the Chinese tech giant is emanating from India’s southernmost tip – Tamil Naidu. Earlier this week Tamil Naidu government said that it will initiate a dialogue with the Indian government to place state-level ban on ByteDance’s video app TikTok.
Tamil Naidu government has accused TikTok app of spreading adult and other types of controversial contents among the teenage population. However, Tamil Nadu is not the only one that is accusing TikTok of alleged misdeeds. TikTok, which helps to create and share short videos, has also come under fire in USA, UK, Hong Kong and Indonesia for exposing teenage population to erotic contents.
ByteDance is obviously not turning blind eye to sudden legal hurdles mounting in India. The company has already hired high profile executive called Sandhya Sharma to kick start the PR exercise with Indian government. It has also hired other high profile executives to further consolidate its Indian operation.
According to Economic Times, Sharma is attempting to hold talks with Tamil Nadu’s information technology minister M Manikandan. Other media reports are also hinting that ByteDance is working really hard to reach out to the Tamil Nadu government.
ByteDance actually can ill afford to exercise any complacency over the Indian market. This is because today India accounts for nearly 27% of new Tik-Tok installs between December 2017-2018. Going by this statistics alone, Indian market is evidently way too critical for the Chinese giant.
Over the years there has been widespread acknowledgement about Chinese phone’s domination of the Indian market. However, there has been lesser recognition about Chinese app’s growing domination in the Indian market. According to Google play store data, today 4 out of top 5 mobile apps in India are Chinese.
Experts claim that Chinese apps like TikTok, Kwai, UCBrowser and PubG have especially became a rage across India’s smaller towns. These Chinese apps are riding high on increasing internet penetration across India’s hinterland, experts add.