Indians flock to desi apps after ban on TikTok, 58 other China-linked apps

Even before the India ban on Chinese apps, homegrown alternatives to TikTok were making news. With the ban in effect these desi TikTok rivals are seeing huge surge in downloads and users.

TikTok was massively popular in India especially since it catered to even the smallest places across the country. TikTok has been removed from Google Play Store and App Store, and it has stopped working as well.

 In the meanwhile, people have been flocking to homegrown TikTok rivals which are registering big spikes in downloads. As people move towards TikTok alternatives we take a look at some of the most popular ones.

Chingari

Chingari launched before the ban on TikTok and other Chinese apps. The app registered 500,000 downloads in just 72 hours. It currently has over 1 million downloads on the Google Play Store. Sumit Ghosh, co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Chinagri also tweeted saying the app had around 100,000 downloads per hour at one point.

Mitron

Mitron had a brief controversial moment as the ‘Made in India’ turned out to have actually originated from Pakistan. The app was even removed from the Google Play Store but restored later. This however didn’t stop Mitron from gaining traction as the app has reached 1.7 crore downloads. The company behind Mitron has also raise ₹2 crore in a seed funding round.

Bolo Indya

Bolo Indya is another TikTok rival in the making as it registered over 2.5 lakh downloads within just 24 hours of the ban. The app is also seeing active users spending over 62 minutes daily. Bolo Indya app has also registered 3,92,000 videos in those last 24 hours.

Roposo

Roposo app has been around for quite a few years. The short video app now has more than 65 million downloads on the Google Play Store. Roposo also said that TikTok influencers with up to 9.5 million followers have moved to its platform. Roposo has over 14 million video creators and it has 80 million videos created monthly.