Ever since the popular social media app TikTok entered India, it has been growing very aggressively in terms of users. Within a record time, the number of TikTok users in India crossed 200 million and now it’s fast closing the gap with Facebook that reportedly has 330 million users in India. To strengthen its global presence and compete with giants like Facebook and Google, TikTok has recently hired Kevin Mayer, Disney’s former head of streaming, as a CEO. The TikTok board believed that having Mayer on the lead position will help ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to grow leaps and bounds in countries outside China, especially in India and the US.
However, in the past two months, the Chinese-origin ByteDance owned TikTok app hit quite a few snags which significantly derailed its growth strategy in India.
According to the data accrued by the app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, downloads of the TikTok app seemed to have fallen by a whopping 34% in April and 28% up to May 23 after growing by 8% in March and 7% in February.
So, what exactly has gone wrong with TikTok in India all of sudden? And, why does it raise a lot many questions on the future of TikTok in the country that has the maximum number of users outside China?
TikTok has over 200 million users in India alone. No wonder, the company announced to invest whopping $1 billion in the country. In fact, the company has agreed to the demand of the Indian government to set up their data centre in India in a bid to iron out privacy concerns related to millions of users’ personal data. However, for the last few weeks, the company has been founding itself in hot water despite making no wrong moves at all.
It's A Free Read Already a subscriber? Log in here |