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TikTok’s India Rival Booms With 500,000 Users Added Every Hour
- India ban helps local apps like Roposo draw millions of users
- Indian firms store data in India, cater to local sensibilities
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In late June, when India banned 59 Chinese apps, including global sensation TikTok, the short-video platform stopped working for its 200 million local users. Within hours, an avalanche of new sign-ups pushed the servers of one of its Bangalore-based rivals, Roposo, to breaking point.
Two weeks on, Roposo, which also offers short videos, says it’s peaking at 500,000 new users an hour and expects to have 100 million by month’s end. That’s almost double the 55 million it had before the ban, and puts Roposo among a profusion of Indian startups to benefit from TikTok’s troubles in the country.