If we go by the apps that grew fastest in the last few years, TikTok would definitely make it to the topper’s list. But with its ban by the government of India the spot is vacant and a multitude of players are vying for it. With the trend of Make In India various local apps have come up in the market. That’s not where this race stops though, there are some big players involved too.
While Zee5 was one of the earliest to announce its short video feature HiPi within the OTT platform it is yet to be launched. HiPi had been in the works for a while, and was called Hypershorts earlier. Unlike TikTok, which caps the video length at 15 seconds, HiPi videos will be over a minute long. HiPi also takes Zee5 closer to its vision of becoming a “super app of entertainment”.
One of India’s biggest audio streaming platform Gaana too jumped in on the opportunity to grab the market left behind by Tiktok and so it came up with ‘Gaana HotShots‘. With over 150M monthly average users on the platform it has the advantage of having a wide user base. It will offer ‘HotShot Challenges’ along with music, comedy and dance by HotShot influencers, celebs and international artists, that will cater to the ever growing appetite of Indians for entertaining short-video.
Another OTT platform that came up with its own version ‘MX TakaTak’ for replacing TikTok is MXPlayer. One can watch trending videos, make creative short videos, save and share status from over 10,000 status videos available on the app’s platform, use other features of the app like its music library, photo and video editor and also the beauty camera. The app is available in 10 languages namely – English, Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada.
Apart from these platforms even Facebook launched ‘Instagram Reels’ in India after already releasing it in Brazil, Germany and France. Reels is similar to TikTok and allows users to create 15 seconds video with popular songs, trends, or challenges. The new feature that is available within the Instagram app, lets users shoot video, add filters and music from Instagram’s library and share it beyond the platform. Users will be able to share Reels in Explore as well as on Feed with followers, depending on their choice. Reels also provides various AR effects that helps add unique touch to your videos. The users won’t be able to monetize their content as of yet.
India was the biggest market for TikTok before it got banned along with 58 other Chinese apps. According to Sensor Tower, TikTok has been downloaded around 2 billion times globally, with India accounting for over 600 million of those installations. Its biggest strength was its penetration and popularity in the rural areas, which gave rise to whole new category of content creators. TikTok gave rise to a new format of content, catering specifically the short attention span of today’s generation. With plethora of content available on the app, it became wildly popular and increased the appetite for such short video content.
Whether these big shots be able to capture this rural market remains to be seen. Replacing TikTok or capturing a major share of its market will be a gigantic task for these clone apps. Given the number of local players like Chingari, Mitron, Trell, Roposo, Sharechat’s Moj app that have flooded the market now, the users of TikTok have spread among them. But the task isn’t something that can’t be done. The biggest factor at play here is time, the longer TikTok remains banned the better it is for these clone apps. It will be worth seeing who comes out at top after the dust settles. Till then keep trying these apps and tell us what’s your favourite.
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