The ban on Chinese apps has proven to be beneficial to Indian alternatives. But to remain competitive in the long run, experts say app makers need to fix quality concerns and ensure regular upgrades for better user experience
Illustration by Chaitanya Surpur
Like most people his age, Shaurya Sharma, 25, from Ludhiana is glued to his phone throughout the day. “I don’t think anyone would shy away from saying that they’re constantly on their phones… and social media takes up a better part of our time,” says says Sharma who runs his family transport business. Today, the world spends more than 10 billion hours per day using social media, which equates to more than one million years of human existence, according to the Digital 2020 October Global Statshot Report by Hootsuite and We Are Social. Sharma was an avid TikTok user before it was banned on June 29, 2020, along with a slew of other Chinese apps following skirmishes at the border. “I was introduced to the short video platform in 2016 and was actively using it till it was banned. Then I switched to Indian alternatives such as Mitron, Chingari and Roposo to name a few that offer regional content and are like TikTok in many ways. It’s great to see so many Indian applications offering content that is at par with their mainstream alternatives. If you have to spend time on apps, why not let those be Indian?” he says.The Indian social media landscape has long evolved, with Facebook and Instagram still taking up the chunk of the Indian user base. India has the largest number of Facebook users (300 million), as of 2020. And, according to a report published by SimilarWeb, Facebook leads the monthly active user count, closely followed by ShareChat, a Bengaluru-based social media platform—one of the many desi apps Indians have warmed up to in recent times. Indians have been trying to make it big on the social media landscape for years, but have always been judged against international giants that dominated the market in the country as well as globally. But there are winds of change. "It is said that no social media platform can be popular in India if it is not already popular in the US or China. However, that has changed in the past few years,” says Shivank Agarwal, founder and CEO of Mitron. An increase in the number of people who can afford technology and the government's Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative have resulted in a rapid growth in the number of homegrown apps and those looking for relatable content. The ban on Chinese apps has proved to be a blessing in disguise as well, making the market one of the most saturated battlegrounds in India. Since the increased focus on everything Indian, there has been a rise in the number of Indian startups across fields. For every startup that was heavily funded in the US, around 50 me-too startups came up in India in 2020, vying for investors’ attention, according to Tracxn, an analytics firm that tracks startups. The rise in the user base of homegrown apps stems from the fact that they are ‘Indian’. These apps brand themselves with the 'Made in India' tag on Google Play Store. For instance, there’s ‘ShareChat–Made in India’ along with the phrase “100% Indian” on the second image in the image carousel. Mx Takatak and Moj are titled ‘Snack on Indian Short Videos | Made in India’, while Mitron calls itself ‘Mitron – India’s Original Short Video App | Indian’ and TokBiz as ‘TokBiz – first Indian social media App’. Here are some Indian apps that have amassed huge popularity in recent times: ShareChat One of India’s pioneering vernacular platforms, ShareChat—launched in 2016—has successfully created a place for itself on the social media landscape in the country. It has done so by doubling down on vernacular content and providing a platform for people who like to interact with their communities in a language that they feel most comfortable with. “Our founders (Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Pratap Singh) realised that there was a need for a content ecosystem in a language other than Hindi or English. People in rural India desire a space where they can easily communicate in their language,” says Berges Y Malu, director, ShareChat, explaining the problem that the app aimed to solve. Most of ShareChat’s users converse in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. Malu credits the app’s success to the lack of political content on the platform. Instead of being an alternative to industry giants like WhatsApp or Facebook, ShareChat positions itself as a complementary platform that facilitates quick and easy sharing to other platforms that their consumers may use, including WhatsApp. As of November 2020, ShareChat crossed 160 million monthly active users speaking 15 Indian languages, according to a company report.