Chingari with 15 million downloads showing the way to other Made in India apps – The Financial Express

The social networking app is witnessing 2-3 million downloads per day after the ban and had 15 million downloads as of Friday evening, shooting to number one app in social networking on the App Store.

By Shriya Roy

Several TikTok stars who enjoyed millions of followers might have to make a fresh start, but many are willing to do so in the name of patriotism. They have ample help from made-in-India offerings.

Chingari, for one. The social networking app is witnessing 2-3 million downloads per day after the ban and had 15 million downloads as of Friday evening, shooting to number one app in social networking on the App Store. Not a new player, having been in the market since 2018, the app seems to be the next best thing users can download. Sumit Ghosh, co-founder and chief of product and growth of Chingari, clearly knows his market. “There are three major things that the Indian public consumes — entertainment, news, and games — and Chingari has all three,” he says.

And, he already has plans for the future. With millions of Tik Tok users shifting base, Ghosh says their aim is to help thousands of talented creators and give them a platform to express themselves freely. “While our current focus is to make a great product, in the near future to make sure that our content creators get paid, we will have advertising and focus more on marketing. Feature addition is always a part of the roadmap, as we move forward.” Already, unlike its Chinese rival, the app pays creators on the basis of popularity of their videos. For every video that users upload, they get points per view that can be redeemed for money.

Other apps like Mitron, Roposo, Dubsmash and Bolo Indya are some other Indian players that offer a platform for uploading short format video content and promise to be good alternatives to Chinese offerings. With 50 million downloads, Roposo presently is the number one app on the App Store for entertainment. Similarly, Myntra, Flipkart and Koovs are pitching themselves as alternatives to popular clothing companies Shein and Club Factory that had to shut shop in India.

The inflow of users also means that the interface, servers and backend of the apps will have to be strengthened to handle the major spike in numbers.

Speaking about this, Chingari’s Ghosh says they were prepared for the sudden spike in downloads as being a tech platform, the technology bit has to be a main focus. “Our focus is to give what our users want and deserve, because they are the ones who we built this for,” he says, adding that their mission is to take India to the world, and “we as an Indian company would be doing that”, affirming plans to have a global reach.

Users are in perfect sync, unanimously agreeing that nothing comes ahead of national security. Many added that there can be replacements for an app and the ban cannot defeat their creativity, urging audiences to not forget them.