![]() The fact that some less popular Chinese apps continue to operate within India, while the more popular ones are banned, comes as no surprise to Sameer Patil, a senior fellow at Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in Mumbai. did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Tiki’s ownership. ![]() DOL Technology PTE is listed in the Singapore government’s corporate registry list at the same address as Hago SG, a social media platform from the Joyy portfolio. ![]() Tiki is the only app registered on Google Play under developer DOL Technology PTE, which was registered with the Singaporean government in July 2020, just weeks after the initial India ban. Until as recently as January 20, 2022, the IP address of Tiki’s official corporate website listed Bigo Technology as its owner. Joyy owns Bigo Technology, a Singapore-based social media company that has previously operated two now-banned short-form video apps in India: Bigo Live and Likee. Reporting by Rest of World highlights several links between Tiki and Joyy Inc., a Nasdaq-listed social media company headed by Chinese billionaire David Xueling Li. “You can't expect businesses to not go around whatever loopholes there are and use them to their advantage, whether they’re Indian or American or whether they’re Chinese, at the end of the day, the main motive is profit and growth,” Siddharth Pai, president of the Bengaluru-based VC firm, Siana Capital Management, told Rest of World. Several of these apps are registered under one-off developer names, with front-end holding companies in Singapore and the British Virgin Islands - a common practice among Chinese tech firms as a means of sidestepping taxation and domestic regulations.Īs long as there is a market for Chinese mobile technology companies to operate in India, they will continue testing the waters, a number of market watchers told Rest of World. These apps include short-form video apps Tiki and Zili, the video-streaming app PlayIt, music video-makers Noizz, Mast, and Mivo, and the ByteDance-owned streaming app Resso. The audit is based on public corporate registration filings, analysis by professional mobile app analytics services, and previous local reporting. Each of these companies was targeted in the bans on more than 320 Chinese apps by the Indian government over the past two years. In one recent interview, Goh suggested the platform was meeting the needs of “real Indian content creators.” The app’s tagline mirrors the Narendra Modi government’s flagship “Make in India” initiative to boost manufacturing in the country.īut, like several apps that found success in the vacuum left after the Indian government’s crackdown, Tiki appears to be owned by a large Chinese tech firm, Joyy Inc.Ī Rest of World audit of the Google Play store indicated that at least eight of the 100 most-downloaded free apps in India may be owned by large Chinese parent companies, such as ByteDance, Xiaomi, Alibaba, and Joyy. ![]() Tiki’s CEO and co-founder, Ian Goh, has frequently used the tagline “ Make in India” to describe the app’s impact, citing the opportunities it’s opened up to rural Indian users. Since its launch in February 2021, as many as 96% of Tiki’s lifetime downloads have been from India. During the first half of this year, the app ranked as roughly the 10th most popular social app in India by downloads, according to the app analytics firm, Apptopia. Over the last two years, the short-form video app, Tiki, has helped fill the void left by the 2020 ban on TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps in India.
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