The government’s ban on Chinese apps put the Indian video-sharing social networking platforms on a fast track to snag the audience TikTok left behind

PM Modi’s call for ‘Vocal for Local’ has been steering desi apps to the forefront for some time now, but with the government’s announcement to impose a ban on 59 Chinese apps on Monday, Indian video-sharing social networking platforms, Roposo and Chingari are now on a fast track to snag the audience left behind by TikTok. Other apps like Share Chat to also climbed the ladder of top favourites in the list of most downloaded apps since the announcement.

With an active user base of 25 million as of Monday, Roposo expects to add another ten million on Tuesday. Apart from its own new users, the platform now also houses TikTokers.

TikTok influencers — the likes of Prem Vats and Noor Afshan with almost 10M followers — have also switched to Roposo in large numbers after the ban.

“Even MyGov, the citizen engagement platform founded by the Government of India is present on Roposo. Our mission is to provide Indians with the largest talent platform that is truly Indian,” said Mayank Bhangadia, Co-Founder of Roposo.

Like TikTok, Roposo also enables users with editing tools to create short-form video content in regional languages.

The other video-sharing social networking platform in the news lately is Chingari, which has also witnessed a record number of downloads.

Sumit Ghosh, co-founder and head of product and growth at Chingari took to Twitter to address users who have been trying to download the app but faced server issues. In a late evening post on Tuesday, Ghosh said, “Hey Bharat! We managed to crash our servers again, guys pls be patient @awscloud and team @Chingari_IN are on it , working hard since last 48 hours, sleeping less than 2 hours, making sure we could scale up all parts of our infra fast.”

As of Tuesday evening, the numbers for Chingari were at 300,000 downloads per hour. 2.2 million videos swipes/views per hour and 850,000 users in the app per hour.

Among adding other new users on to their platform, Share Chat had a big new entrant on their platform on Tuesday. MyGovIndia went Live on ShareChat with the intention of connecting and engaging with over  60 million active users in 15 Indian languages on the platform.

The government’s move to ban Chinese apps is already being touted as the beginning of India’s Aatmanirbharta Revolution.

Roma Priya, founder of Burgeon Law said, “The entire nation is appreciating this move as it provides a plethora of opportunities for Indian tech startups in the form of Digital Aatmanirbharta Revolution. Many of our Indian technology experts are celebrated across the globe for their work and this is time for the aspiring techies to make for the global audience. Taken in the best interest of Indians, it will go a long way with job creation in our massive technology domain. Very soon, there will be numerous startups launching alternatives to banned apps. Another positive thing is that with home-grown apps, users will feel secure about our state and public orders.”