The Central Government on Monday banned 59 apps in view of the information available that they are engaged in activities prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of the country. The move will safeguard the interests of crores of Indian mobile and internet users, the government said. The apps include TikTok, Shareit, Kwai, UC Browser, Baidu map, Shein, Clash of Kings, DU battery saver, Helo, Likee, YouCam makeup, Mi Community, CM Browers, Virus Cleaner, APUS Browser, ROMWE, Club Factory, Newsdog, Beauty Plus, WeChat and UC News.
With these popular apps gone now, Indians are looking for alternatives that are similar to the likes of TikTok, CamScanner, UC Browser and more. So, what are the alternatives now available for Indian consumers? Here's a look at some of the most popular ones and their Desi alternatives.
TikTok is perhaps the most famous of all these Chinese apps. Owned by ByteDance, it had the largest user-base in India, with at least 119.3 million users and popular among all sections of society. There are two significant Indian alternatives for TikTok.
Chingari
Touted as the most Desi choice to Tiktok, the app was reportedly developed by an IT professional of Chhattisgarh and developers from Odisha and Karnataka. Since the announcement of the ban, Chingari has witnessed hundreds of downloads. Chingari's chief of product, Sumit Ghosh, hailing from Bhilai in Chattisgarh, told Times of India that it took him about two years to develop this mobile application. The app was released officially on Google Play store in November 2018.
Bolo Indya
Bolo Indya which brands itself as 'Tik Tik India,' describes itself as "an Indian video app, to create and share short videos in regional languages of India- Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi and Odia."
CamScanner
This app is frequently used by numerous Indian users to create digital copies of physical documents.
Alternatives can be Adobe Scan, Microsoft Office Lens and Google Drive, which are equally efficient.
Club Factory and Shein
These two apps were competing with Indian fashion brands like Myntra and Flipkart with their affordable but trendy and good quality clothing. These Chinese e-commerce apps are famous for their massive discounts and also for affordable designer labels.
Alternatives: Flipkart, Myntra, Amazon, and all the other similar e-commerce websites can easily be called more dependable as we have seen over time.
UCBrowser and APUS Browser
These browsers mostly used to come pre-downloaded with Chinese smartphones.
However, its alternatives: Google Chrome, Brave, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and many others have been proven to be safer and user-friendly.
The Ministry of Information Technology, invoking it's power under section 69A of the Information Technology Act read with the relevant provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009 and in view of the emergent nature of threats has decided to block 59 apps.
TikTok, however, clarified almost immediately after the announcement that it did not pass on any information about its users to any foreign government including the Chinese government and would not do so in the future too. In a statement which came hours after the government announced the ban on 59 mobile and web applications, TikTok India’s head Nikhil Gandhi said the company had been invited to meet with government stakeholders concerned "to respond and submit clarifications".
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has received many complaints from various sources including several reports about the misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users' data in an unauthorised manner to servers which have locations outside India. ''The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India, which ultimately impinges upon the sovereignty and integrity of India, is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures,'' according to a Ministry of Electronics & IT statement.
