India's 'digital strike’ on Chinese apps may result in Rs 45,000 crore loss to Tiktok’s parent company Bytedance

New Delhi | Jagran Business Desk: The unprecedented decision of India to ban 59 Chinese apps, on accounts of them being ‘prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order’, could result in huge losses to Beijing-based Tech-conglomerate Bytedance, the parent company of Tiktok and Helo App.

According to Chinese Government’s mouthpiece Global Times, Bytedance is set to lose as high as $6 billion, that is, over 45,000 crore after Indian government’s ban on its instant-video sharing apps.

Both Tiktok and Helo, together had over 20 Crore active monthly users in India, which was over 39 per cent of Bytedance’s total user base worldwide, amounting to such a huge loss of 45,000 crore.

Explained: How govt will enforce ban on TikTok and other Chinese apps and what will be its impact in India

Bytedance’s Tiktok was launched to little fanfare in China in 2015. It was the same time, when in India, an instant-video sharing app Musical.ly started establishing itself among the Gen Z and millennials especially. Bytedance bought Musical.ly for $800 million and put it out as Tiktok which became its flagship app just within few months of its launch in India. Soon India was to account for over one-third of Bytedance’s global user base.

Union Minister Ravishankar Prasad, who previously also held the portfolio of Information and Broadcasting Ministry, was quoted as saying by the news agency PTI that banning of Chinese apps is a ‘Digital Strike’, which will result in exponential growth of homegrown applications.

The trend appears to be moving towards same direction.

After the 29th June ban of Chinese apps, various homegrown apps, such as Bengaluru-based Sharechat and New Delhi-based Chingari, recorded over three to five lakh downloads per hour on 30th June, implying that the shift of Tiktok’s user-base is gradually opening up new windows of Revenues for indigenous Technology conglomerates. "We are growing at a breakneck speed right now," Chingari-app co-founder Sumit Ghosh was quoted as saying.