TikTok to be relaunched in India soon? ByteDance exploring THIS option

New Delhi: When short video making app TikTok shut down its India operations, millions of Indians were left heart broken. However, parent company ByteDance is reportedly exploring selling the India operations of TikTok to Indian unicorn Glance, Bloomberg News has reported.

The discussions are in early state and has been initiated by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp, Bloomberg added.

InMobi, Glance’s parent company owns short-video app Roposo that became really popular after TikTok was banned by the Indian government. TikTok, a global phenomenon, reached over 120 million Indian users before it was banned in July 2020 among several others, including the hot favourite mobile game PUBG.

According to the latest Sensor Tower data, TikTok emerged as the second most installed non-gaming app worldwide last month with close to 62 million installs.

Video sharing apps Tiktok and Helo of ByteDance were among the 59 apps blocked by the government in June. In January, the Ministry of Electronics and IT further communicated to the companies that the order to block them will continue.

ByteDance in January had announced it will shut its India business and cut the 2,000-plus employees to a bare minimum over the uncertainty in making a comeback following a ban on its hugely popular TikTok video app in the country, the company told employees in an internal memo.

Tiktok’s global interim head Vanessa Pappas and vice president for global business solutions Blake Chandlee in a joint email to employees communicated the decision of the company to reduce its team size and the decision will impact all employees in India.