5 Short Video Apps That Have Filled TikTok's Shoes In India Since the ban of around 250 Chinese apps last year, many short video alternatives have gained popularity

Ever since Bytedance launched the international version of TikTok in 2017, the app has taken the world by storm. It has overtaken Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook messenger in terms of downloads.

TikTok also had huge popularity in India until its ban last year. Along with TikTok, around 250 Chinese apps were banned by the Indian government due to the geopolitical crisis with China. This left a huge void and to capitalize on it many short video players in India jumped straight in. They successfully wooed the fans who were missing TikTok and came to the limelight within weeks or months of the ban.

In the last year since the ban, many such short video alternatives have come to the fore. According to a recent report by RedSeer, new users in the short video space in India have grown by 20 per cent post the TikTok ban. The userbase is at present at 240 million. The report also says that the number of users in the short video space is estimated to increase to 650 million by 2025, which will make the space second to television in terms of reach.

Here is a list of five short video apps that have gained immense popularity since the ban.

Chingari

Founded by Sumit Ghosh, Biswatma Nayak, Deepak Salvi and Aditya Kothari in 2018, the app has 75 million total downloads, 3.5 million daily active and 34 million monthly active users today. Users can upload videos in more than 20 languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telegu, among others.

The homegrown short-form video app also offers social video commerce with its Chingari multiplex offerings. It has also partnered with celebrity engagement platform Celebyte, two independent music labels TM Music and ii Music and few others to strengthen its position in the market.

Mitron

Mitron was the first app to replace TikTok in India. It touched the 1 crore downloads mark immediately after the ban. Since then, it has been showing remarkable growth despite some hurdles such as news reports claiming that it was a copy of a Pakistani app, security concerns and removal from Google Play Store (it was back after few days).

At present, Mitron has more than 10 million downloads on the Play Store. According to the creators of the app, Mitron is designed for people to showcase their innovative videos in line with its theme with light humor.

MX TakaTak

According to a recent report by mobile app marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower, MX TakaTak was the number one app in Asia in the first quarter of 2021. Its popularity has surpassed the likes of Instagram and Facebook.

Globally, it was the most downloaded Indian app with more than 80 million downloads. Interestingly, it was in the top ten most downloaded apps globally across Google Play and App Store. TikTok, Facebook and Instagram were the top three most downloaded apps. The app completed its one year recently and within this short span of time, it reportedly has over 150 million monthly active users, more than 48 million unique creators and more than 355 million installs.

Moj

Developed by ShareChat, Moj has been having a good run so far. It recently made headlines when it had 50000 downloads within two days in July. A popular app among many, it has more than 100 million downloads and supports 15 languages, including Hindi, Urdu, English, Assamese, Bengali, Odia, among others.

Moj was launched July 2020, shortly after the TikTok ban and in a month the number of users grew to 50 million users.

Last month, ShareChat, raised a $145 million funding round valuing the company at $2.88 billion. This came a few months after it raised $502m from Snap, Twitter and Tiger Global Management, which valued the company at $2.1bn.

Josh

Few months after the Chinese app ban, Josh raised more than $100 million from investors including Alphabet Inc's Google and Microsoft. This popular app offers content in different languages including English, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, and more.

VerSe Innovation, owner of Josh, is reportedly valued at more than $1 billion following the investment.

Last year, after the fundraising, the company had said that it would be developing artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology to help it capture an ever wider audience and would move to international markets that have a need for vernacular content.