New Delhi: Homegrown apps like ‘ShareChat’, ‘Roposo’, ‘Chingari’ and ‘GoSocial’ have seen a significant increase in downloads and user signups on their platforms after the government’s decision to ban 59 Chinese apps. The move to ban Chinese apps, announced by the Information Technology Ministry, came against the backdrop of border standoff between India and China.
‘ShareChat’, India’s largest regional language social media platform, said it has witnessed an ‘exponential growth’ in the last two days. The platform claimed to have seen 5,00,000 downloads on an hourly basis and over 15 million downloads since the ban was announced Monday.
“We are excited to see the way people are exploring ‘ShareChat’ for the endless possibilities it offers to the people. Also for making it the preferred Indian social media platform… enabling us to emerge as the leader in the Indian social media landscape. We are confident that this sets up the foundation of another success for ShareChat,” ShareChat COO and co-founder Farid Ahsan said.
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The company said it has already seen more than one lakh posts supporting the government move towards banning Chinese applications. The posts were liked by over one million users with over half a million shares on WhatsApp, it added.
ShareChat has over 150 million registered users and 60 million monthly active users across 15 Indian languages.
Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra-backed ‘Hapramp’ said its social networking solution ‘GoSocial’ has seen a surge of 20 per cent in its user base in the last few days. It now has over 80,000 users.
Shubhendra Vikram, founder and CEO of ‘Hapramp’, said while there has been a surge in downloads of Indian apps, this could be temporary.
“It’s time for founders to get back to their planning boards and chalk out a plan for a strong technology infrastructure which ensures user needs for a seamless experience and secure online presence are met in the long term,” said Vikram.
Social media app ‘Trell’ claimed that traffic on its platform has increased more than 500 per cent in just 24 hours after the ban.
“We have had over 1.5 million downloads and counting. Users are truly appreciative of the platform and are engaging with the community actively. They are even encouraging fellow Indians to join them and promote our home-grown app,” Trell Co-Founder Pulkit Agrawal said.
Similarly, digital audio platform ‘Khabri’, post the ban, has been seeing 80 per cent surge in daily downloads, taking the number to 18,000-24,000 downloads everyday (from 10,000-15,000 a day previously), Khabri co-founder and president Sandeep Singh claimed.
‘Chingari’ – which is being touted as a rival to ‘TikTok’ — has seen manifold growth in usage in the past few weeks.
“…Currently adding 300,000 new users every hour!,” Chingari’s Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Sumit Ghosh said in a tweet and also shared a picture that showed it had added 7.84 million new users.
Ghosh also said the step taken by the government was good and welcomed TikTok users to come and try its app saying it is ‘100 per cent India grown app, and made for the passionate Indians’.
‘Roposo’ – which describes itself as a ‘Made in India’ short video app with over 65 million downloads – said many ‘TikTok’ users, including influencers have moved to its platform following the ban.
Influencers who have switched to Roposo include Prem Vats and Noor Afshan who have fan followings of 9.5 million and nine million, respectively on TikTok, it noted.
