A sum of 224 apps have been banned of China by the Indian app stores in the last few months. To fight back this ban of apps, China has rebranded their apps and have got it listed back on the Indian app store. These apps are rebranded versions of the previous used applications.
Some of the app which have been rebranded and introduced in India are Snack Video and Hago. So, Snack video is basically a new version of the short-video app Tiktok which is owned by Byte Dance. Hago was an app on which people were allowed to create chat rooms with strangers and also play games with them. This app has been replaced with the app, Ola party. The Ola party app doesn’t as of now provide the gaming facility.
The queries of such happenings had been put forward by ET to which a senior official said, “this should not be the case. If this is happening, we will take up the matter.” The happenings are availability of banned apps and rebranding of some apps on which the Ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY) said that issued advisories that no such brands, shall be renamed and introduced in India in any form.
When ET put forward these queries to Kuaishou, no response was given. According to expert’s view, India is a lucrative market and as Chinese companies have lost their space in this market, China is getting restless. An Indian market can not be ignored by any country in the world and anyone and everyone will take efforts to get in to it.
According to Santosh Pai, partner of Link Legal India Law service, “If the app ban doesn’t subside in a few months, banned apps in new avatars will crop up. The Indian Internet market is obviously hard to ignore for the Chinese or other companies.”
Pai App companies said, “The new trend will be of the Chinese developers teaming up with Indian developers to mitigate political risk and launching the apps, as one does not need enormous amounts of capital to launch an app—anywhere between $2 million and $ 5 million is enough.”
NEWS REPORTED BY:
VRIDHI BHAGNARI.
