Who will win the race?

Indian government has banned 59 Apps, out of which many were hardly as impactful as TikTok, the video sharing social media App. The Chinese-based app enjoyed over 200 million users in India, its largest market in the world. It ad 611 million downloads in the country. One of the major successes of the App amidst mobile savvy India community was its reach. While the other social media apps had limited reach in rural India; TikTok and to an extent Helo App penetrated the real India. You had construction workers making TikTok videos from within their makeshift dwelling; village woman showcased her talent; and soon the App became a platform for the talented and interestingly the not so talented ones too became popular for the sheer energy and passion they displayed while communicating through the App, and they garnered humungous follower base and became stars overnight. You had Bollywood stars taking their support to promote their films. And, the ban has left a prospective void waiting to be filled by the most user-friendly Indian-made App.

Some of these apps have already recorded a massive increase in downloads on the same night TikTok was banned. One amongst them is Chingari. This India-based app was founded by Biswatma Nayak and Sumit Ghosh from Bengaluru. From one lakh downloads this app saw a whopping one crore in just one month, June 2020. One June 30 the app was being downloaded at a rate of 6 lakh downloads per an hour. In addition to being a platform for short videos Chingari also features news and the App also gained popularity when Anand Mahindra tweeted about it on June 28.

Mitron App is exactly similar to TikTok, often known as the exact clown of the Chinese counterpart; this App was founded by an IIT Roorkee student.

Bolo Indya founded in 2019 supports short videos of upto 70 seconds and in eight Indian languages, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi and Odia.

Dubsmash, an old app that allows you to lip sync to famous dialogues, songs and post videos that was much popular before Tik tok took over the space is now back in favour.

Google's 2020 launch, a short video app Tangi, which is aimed at learning new skills, gets its name from 'Teach and Give and Tangible'. It connects people with similar hobbies and interests making it a cross between video app, and social platform.

HiPi launched by Zee 5 recently allows you to share short videos and promises exciting features to help the subscribers express themselves and gain popularity. The founders say it encourage self-expression and it aims to unlock the potential talent that this country has by inviting talented and diverse content creators who are seeking a platform that encourages creativity and paves the way to stardom.

Looking at the success rate of TikTok, and the huge subscriber base that are now left high and dry, many more apps are bound to make an entry into the space of short video sharing. The ones that provide the maximum flexibility, features and reach will surely make its way into this much vibrant social media space.